4 out of 5

Directed by: Jay Cheel, Jordan Downey, Virat Pal, Justin Martinez, Christian and Justin Long, and Kate Siegel

The most consistent V/H/S entry in years – we’re seven deep! – and probably the only entry so far where each vignette is legitimately fun. We also have one segment that can be pitted against Radio Silence’s 10/31/98 as the single best segment of the entire series, if not of any horror anthology. (Seriously.)

Even inclusive of its flaws, this is top tier found footage. Maybe it’s the theme, maybe it’s the luck of the draw of a solid batch of creators, maybe it’s having exhausted all the obvious stuff in six prior rounds… Whatever the case, if you like horror anthologies but have skipped out on this series for various reasons, if you can tolerate some shaky cam (one of those flaws), V/H/S/Beyond is so, so much fun.

Firstly: I think this proves that the framing sequence matters. They don’t have to – like an anthology can be great with a dumb frame – but if they are good, it can elevate the whole thing. While Jay Cheel’s alien abduction faux-doc wraparound somewhat bungles its ending, Cheel, with experience both as a documentarian and within horror, makes the presentation so, so legitimate that the eventual letdown of its conclusion – a “reveal” of some apparent alien footage – honestly doesn’t matter. You could even say it’s kind of in line with “real” documentaries of this nature, which have to be much ado about nothing. Bringing in Mitch Horovitz and the Corridor Crew gang as alien vid debunkers is icing on this legit-presentation cake. You’re interested to return to the framing sequence, which inevitably ramps you up a bit for each entry that follows.

Next up: Stork, by Jordan Downey, and co-written with Kevin Stewart. While this is the first example of the worst thing to plague this entry overall – extensive POV cuts between cameras, rapid-fire editing to the point of really breaking up the visual flow – it admittedly allows Downey (and the other entries) to “justify” keeping the camera following the action without having to justify someone bringing it into the room or whatever. Still – it’s moderately disorienting. Also still – once you get over your initial boredom of Stork being a kind of first person Resident Evil, someone hits the “overkill” button and damn, the short just immediately turns into an all-out blast that doesn’t stop until its expertly executed visuals during its conclusion. That’s a pay off.

Virat Pal’s (and co-writer Evan Dickson’s) Dream Girl posits two Mumbai paparazzi’s trying to get some surreptitious vids of recent pop sensation “Tara,” only for the video to go… very wrong. As with Stork, there’re too many cuts, and the gag relies on the lights going out for some tension – but that only stacks on top of the cuts to be more disorientating than anything. However, also as with Stork, there’s a point where Pal and Dickson play a flashy card on top of the initial I’ve-seen-this-before vibes that elevates this entry immensely. It’s way more than just a cultural spin (if comparing to US / UK variants) on found footage: it’s its own thing, with its own flavor of gore and horror that’s lovably cynical and, again, pays off.

We’ll come back to entry three for the sake of Justin and Christian Long’s “Fur Babies.” While this seems like the odd one out of the pack in terms of being somewhat more “grounded” – it could probably fly in the other V/H/S entries – considering “Beyond” strictly science fiction as a theme, it still works, playing in to a more twisted, modern version of tropes from that genre that stretch back generations… This one’s a bit more cartoonish overall, but lead Libby Letlow (playing an overly invested dog sitter) sells it, and the Longs find a way to escalate the antics beyond the initial gross-out direction in which it seems like things are going…

The lead in Kate Siegel’s and writer Mike Flanagan’s Stowaway – Alanah Pearce – is also responsible for really making the material work. Stowaway is conceptually solid, with UFO hunter Hailey filming her discovery of an alien craft while tracking strange sighting in the Mojave, but Siegel and Flanagan follow the Flanagan plan of trying to, like, “elevate” horror with emotional baggage backstory, and I’m just not sure how effective it is in a short format. Pearce gives her role a lot of weight, but when we switch over to the “action” of finding the craft, I dunno, the overdubbing of Hailey’s childhood vids feels like a forced detail. And the ending is frightening is interesting, and probably the only entry here that aims for a more enduring scare – something that doesn’t explicitly happen on camera – but is that best for the V/H/S format? I’m not sure. I enjoyed this one, but it drifted a bit too much, and felt closest, structurally, to previous V/H/S entries that are trying a bit too hard.

Because sometimes you can just go for broke the whole while, and that works too. Is it coincidence that Justin Martinez’s (and co-writer Ben Turner’s) Live and Let Dive – the aforementioned best-of-the-best entry – is the only single-camera / (faux-)single-take entry in V/H/S/Beyond? Or that I could describe the plot start to finish, and you’d still enjoy every minute of it? Hm. This boils down to a pack of friends running afoul of some Earthbound aliens, but literally from the first few seconds of this one, with the camera management always feeling natural but precise, and the way the dialogue expertly sets up characters and stakes succinctly: you know you’re in good hands. You’ll be able to guess the approximate steps in the story once the setup locks in, and still, this thing will have you from start to finish. A finish that, as with Cheel’s work, is ultimately kind of underwhelming! But every single second before that kicks so much ass, and is so much fun, that the fact that they took it to that ending – there were easier places to yell Cut – is appreciated. This is the kind of classic horror you want to watch with an audience; or that you’ll be telling all your friends to check out.

With a somewhat less demanding non-theme of just being scary, Beyond asks its creatives to combine science fiction with its spooks, meaning that you can afford to get creative and weird and let that be the scary factor, over trying to dream up some ultimate bloodbath that we’ve actually seen before. That freedom seemed to beckon best efforts from a very talented crew, making for the only V/H/S that I’d happily watch start to finish again, and not have to cherry pick one scene over another. (Although maybe I will watch Live and Let Dive on its own a few more times…)