3 out of 5

Directed by: Alex Clegg, Courtney Wherrett, Alex Tobin, Steven Payne, Morgan Tedd

While U/S/B is somewhat lacking in the same creative sparkle of the preceding D/V/D-Redacted, by shifting away from backrooms-adjacent clips and continuing to build out its “PORT” lore, the Youtube horror world being constructed around these films by channel latenight.99 and its creators remains incredibly exciting; the “sparkle” is replaced by a steadier production hand and more variation in the vignettes – a fair exchange for film-making maturity, achieved in record turnaround time when production and cast crews can be counted on one hand.

The main win for U/S/B, though, is star Courtney Wherrett, who stars in and directs the wraparound feature of an online influencer type, exploring these PORT recordings she’s received on a USB stick (taped to an accompanying threatening letter!) in the mail. Thus the structure is essentially similar to D/V/D – with a host / us watching the clips together; the host more and more unnerved – but Chloe’s reactions, and the balance of her “real” reactions to her viewers versus what she’s actually feeling, are effected so believably that you really can get wrapped up in this like an ARG, especially given the streaming platform its on.

The shorts all have compelling ideas, but there are a couple that tip their hands into kind of self-aware horror stuff at points (over acting, stating the obvious out loud) that betrays how good D/V/D’s creators were at just kind of going all in without having to wink at the audience. However, it’s the exchange mentioned: instead of some rough CG and an obsession with liminal spaces, we get just a splash of the latter, and otherwise some really compellingly creepy ideas – and visuals! – that maybe come up short on budget or runtime, netting us ultimately to about the same level. But: again: we’re getting this for free, and the teams on this are so small that it’s insane how much better this is than a comparatively larger budgeted found footage flick you could find in the nethers of Netflix or Tubi.

And also again, kudos to the overall braintrust for not trying to blow up their lore beyond the basics: latenight.99 knows we’re here for the shorts, and they get us to it.