Shudder

The seventh (!) in the found footage anthology series takes a science fictional turn.

‘Abduction/Adduction’, written and directed by Jay Cheel, provides the framing narrative and follows the discovery of two videotapes apparently showing proof of an alien encounter at the Farrington House, a Canadian residence that’s an urban legend in UFOlogy circles. It’s a smart idea, and the use of people like author and ufologist Mitch Horowitz and the Corridor Digital YouTube channel team as themselves gives it a nicely documentary edge.  As the sections go on, we get cliff notes on accepted UFO lore and some hints of how the family were affected. It’s nicely done and brings in everything from Whitley Streiber to Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds broadcast to provide context. It also gives Horowitz a chance to drop the line of the movie with the idea that we are not alone and “maybe our company does not wish us well”.

The problem with it is, ultimately, the problem with the movie as a whole and the UFOlogy field in general: constant build up, little delivery. The video tapes contain pretty conclusive evidence of something horrific not only visiting the house but mutilating a resident in a way as unlikely as it is undeniable. The experts say it’s inconclusive and the moment they do your suspension of disbelief evaporates. For the tape to be played it would need to be removed from a human corpse. In the movie’s world, its existence alone is concrete proof of its veracity and yet, we get a ‘or is it?’ that would make Scully roll her eyes. It’s possible Cheel is aiming for a metatextual point about how frustrating this field can be but it just lands as an anticlimax.

That sense of underdevelopment plagues most of the stories here. ‘Stork’ directed by Jordan Downey and written by Downey and Kevin Stewart has a fun premise, following W.A.R.D.E.N. an off the books team of NYPD monster hunters. There’s a neat hint of possible future stories featuring them and a group of tapes with some names that will be familiar to fans of the franchise in their HQ. There’s a gloriously nasty monster too, one that seems to have been built practically.

But that’s all there is. The characters are all the exact stereotypes you’d expect (Old guy! Principled veteran! Newbie! Hot head! Token woman!) and the plot is essentially a House of the Dead level. The action’s fun but the action is all there is. It’s also undeniably got a bad taste to it in 2025, given it’s a story about an NYPD unit taking vigilante action in a poor neighbourhood. There’s something here, something interesting to be sure, but this is at most the first act of the story it needs to be.

‘Dream Girl’, directed by Virat Pal from a script by Pal and Evan Dickson is barely even that. Arnab and Sonu, two Mumbai paparazzi, are sent to get footage of the latest Bollywood sensation, Tara. They sneak into her trailer and discover that she’s being abused by her manager and is also something other than human. It’s a great premise and it evaporates in five minutes so Tara can slaughter her way through the cast of the movie she’s filming. There’s no hint of what she is, no exploration of the price of fame filtered through the supernatural and no explanation for why she’s happy murdering the people she apparently wants to worship her. She might be an android, she might be a god, the movie doesn’t bother giving us an explanation and like ‘Stork’, gives us precious little to care about.

‘Live and Let Dive’, directed by Justin Martinez and written by Ben Turner and Martinez, has the same small premise but makes what’s missing a feature. One with teeth. A birthday party group of skydivers see a UFO, are attacked and plummet to Earth pursued by the aliens. It’s a brilliantly simple, horrible premise and one that Martinez finds some great visuals in. One character hurtling earthwards with a leg wound drawing a straight line of blood in the sky is one of those horror movie beats designed to stay with you. Likewise, the aliens themselves, murderously angry quadrupedal greys with a fondness for violence and a hatred for prop driven aircraft. All style, again, all premise, again and all gore but this is the first segment that not only works but feels like it could support a longer movie rather than demand one.

‘Fur Babies’, written and directed by Christian and Justin Long, is fully developed in a way the other segments aren’t but has different problems. it follows a pair of animal rights activists infiltrating a dog daycare centre they’ve decided to investigate for illegal taxidermy. The truth is of course much nastier, and so is the tone. The daycare manager, Becky, has been making surgical hybrids of dogs and people and the animal rights activists are her new subjects.

It’s never less than competent, but it’s rarely more than that. The Longs have a good eye for the unpleasant but the relentlessly mean-spirited nature of the script makes it hard to care. The animal rights activists are all shrill, self-righteous venal idiots. Becky, played very well by Libby Letlow, is a stereotypical ‘gosh darn it, murder’ lady of a certain age and nothing that happens here is a surprise. Like ‘Dream Girl’ it stops rather than ends and like ‘Stork’ it grabs the lowest possible hanging fruit for its characters and pays the price.

‘Stowaway’, the final section, is brilliant. Genuinely brilliant. Alanah Pearce stars as Halley, a woman who has possibly left her family behind to pursue her study of UFOs. She finds them, and they find her.

Written by Mike Flanagan and directed by Kate Siegel, the expectations for this one are set high and it exceeds them. Pearce is great as a woman whose brilliance is matched only by her frustration, and there are a couple of moments here that really hit. The Cloverfield gimmick of recording over the wrong video tape leads to a gut punch of a line in particular. It feels churlish to praise that when the Longs’ movie riffs so hard on Kevin Smith’s Tusk to much less effect, but the truth is this segment works best. Every other story here has a cast. This one has a character, a woman who is written as complex, difficult, flawed and human. You care. That makes it so much worse when the final card is turned over. Flanagan’s always great, often verbose dialogue is pared all the way back here and Siegel centres her leading woman throughout, giving human scope to the final scenes especially. The twist, that gives the episode its title, is horrific in its simplicity and execution as Halley finds out just how much the final frontier can hurt and the ending here uses her emotions, the location and what we can’t see to devastating effect. Again, you could criticise it for the fact we have the video tape. However, unlike ‘Abduction/Adduction’, the story earns and rewards our trust.

Verdict: V/H/S Beyond is often fun, occasionally very good, brilliant once and almost entirely frustrating. Horror short fiction is one of my favourite fields and part of my day job. I know it can be done well but here, far too often, style wins over content. Gorehounds will love it. Everyone else may want to skip straight to ‘Stowaway.’ 6/10

Alasdair Stuart