Producer – Josh Goldbloom, James Harris, Brad Miska & Michael Schreiber, Visual Effects Supervisor – Justin Martinez, Makeup Effects – Patrick Magee. Production Company – Studio 71/Cinepocalypse.
Abduction/Abduction
Director/Music – Jay Cheel, Producer – Brian Robertson, Photography – Mike McLaughlin, Special Effects Designer – Patrick Magee.
Brian Baker, Trevor Dow, Gerry Eng, Sam Gorski, Mitch Horowitz, Niko Pueringer, Wren Weichman
Stork
Director – Jordan Downey, Screenplay – Jordan Downey & Kevin Stewart, Based on Artwork by Oleg Vdovenko, Photography – Kevin Stewart, Music – Nick Soole, Special Effects Supervisor – Aaron Insley, Creature Creator – Patrick Magee, Production Design – Jessee Clarkson.
Thom Hallum (Broome), James C. Burns (Aubert), Jolene Andersen (Bennet), Tyler Joseph Andrews (Ivy)
Dream Girl
Director – Virat Pal, Screenplay – Evan Dickinson & Virat Pal, Producer – Nehal Pal, Photography – Tapan Bushar Basu, Music – Prassanna Vishwanathan, Makeup Effects – IF SFX Art Maker, Production Design – Prashant Dubey.
Namrata Sheth (Tara), Sayandeep Sengupta (Arnab), Rohan Joshi (Sonu), Ashwin Mushran (Manager)
Live and Let Dive
Director – Justin Martinez, Screenplay – Justin Martinez & Ben Turner, Photography – Dan Marks, Special Effects Designer – Patrick Magee, Production Design – Jessee Clarkson.
Bobby Slaski (Zach), Rhett Wellington (Logan), Jerry Campisi (Noah), Bix Krieger (Brittney), Hannah McBride (Jess)
Fur Babies
Directors/Screenplay – Christian Long & Justin Long, Photography – Alexander Chinnici, Special Effects Creature Creator – Patrick Magee, Production Design – Calder Greenwood.
Libby Letlow (Becky), Matthew Layton (Stewart), Braedyn Bruner (Angela), Kevin Bohleber (Miles), Phillip Lundquist (Bo)
Stowaway
Director – Kate Siegel, Screenplay – Mike Flanagan, Photography – Michael Finognari, Special Effects Creature Creator – Patrick Magee, Production Design – Calder Greenwood.
Alanah Pearce (Halley)
Plot
Abduction/Abduction:- A series of videotapes are examined by paranormal and visual effects experts concerning the haunted Farrington House in Canada, along with other tapes that seem to show alien abductions. Stork:- A police S.W.A.T. team enter a house in search of a series of baby abductions and encounter zombies and unearthly alien lifeforms. Dream Girl:- Two Mumbai press photographers seek a scoop with Bollywood star Tara on the set of her latest film. Sneaking into her trailer, they discover that Tara is an android. She proceeds to go berserk and slaughter everybody on the film set. Live and Let Dive:- A group of friends go skydiving for Zach’s birthday, but the plane collides with a UFO. They are thrown out. Those that make it to the ground are pursued by an unearthly alien creature. Fur Babies:- Two animal rights activists conduct an undercover investigation into Becky’s dog daycare, suspecting she is conducting illicit taxidermy. Instead, Becky uncovers their ruse and makes them prisoners, surgically altering them to become dog-like. Stowaway:- Halley conducts a solo video investigation into extraterrestrial phenomena in the desert. She comes across an alien ship and ventures inside, only to be snatched as it takes off.
The V/H/S films have been the more popular among the spate of multi-director Anthology Films that came out in the 2010s. The gimmick of the series was that all of the episodes were made in the Found Footage format. The series has so far consisted of V/H/S (2012), V/H/S/2 (2013) and V/H/S Viral (2014). After a gap of several years, there was V/H/S/94 (2021), V/H/S/99 (2022), V/H/S/85 (2023) and V/H/S/Beyond and subsequent to this V/H/S/Halloween (2025), all of which were made for the Shudder Network and appeared at the annual Halloween season.
The last three V/H/S films before this, made for Shudder, feel like they have been coasting by on the brand name recognition factor. There have been one or two decent segments amongst them, but the substantial number of episodes have been easily forgettable. As a result, I wasn’t in a hurry to get around to watching V/H/S/Beyond – for one, the credits, as listed above, are a pain to have to do with the pause button, much more so than any other type of film. That said, while V/H/S/Beyond is still another Shudder release, it is a substantial improvement over the previous three films.
V/H/S/Beyond does mix up the formula somewhat. For one, three of the five episodes here count as science-fiction, whereas the only SF entry in the entire preceding films would be Jason Eisener’s Slumber Party Alien Abduction in V/H/S/2. This also experiments with having narrators, which is not a good idea – least of which is that these are mostly visual effects people and would-be filmmakers, who try to act as portents of knowledge while having made the unforgiveable sin of not really having read up much on either 1950s SF cinema or Orson Welles’ The War of the Worlds (1938) radio broadcast beyond making sweeping generalisations.
The first segment Stork comes from Jordan Downey, a US filmmaker who had previously made ThanksKilling (2008), ThanksKilling 3 (2012) and The Head Hunter (2018). This is an utterly wild episode right from the outset. There is a standard plot where police enter a house and encounter … things. This is shot in a way that feels exactly like a modern first-person shooter game – frequent point-of-view shots with a pair of hands wielding guns right in the centre of the frame – and a furious round of shooting as the cops eliminate zombies as they make their way through the house. Things become increasingly more outlandish as they encounter zombie babies and then a giant monstrous stork in the attic. The segment is based on the artwork of Russian artist Oleg Vdovenko.
The second segment Dream Girl comes from Indian filmmaker Virat Pal, who had only previously made one film with Recapture (2016). Pal is spoofing Bollywood cinema – we even get a brief Bollywood song and dance number – and the obsession with celebrity. For reasons that never make a whole lot of sense, two paparazzi are following a Bollywood actress (Namrata Sheth) and spy on her in her trailer where she abruptly reveals she is an android and proceeds to go amok. Things get fairly wild as she makes her way across the film set, shedding sparks and slaughtering everybody she comes across.
Live and Let Dive comes from Justin Martinez, who was one of the members of Radio Silence who made their breakout on the first V/H/S with the 10/31/98 episode and then the The Way In and The Way Out episodes of Southbound (2015). While co-Radio Silence members Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett went onto bigger things with the likes of Ready or Not (2019) and Scream (2022), Martinez stayed with visual effects and has performed said functions on a number of other anthologies and films, including being the overall visual effects supervisor for V/H/S Beyond and the previous three V/H/S films.
Martinez’s segment is another one that goes for a wildness. This has an incredibly inventive and ambitious approach to Found Footage that starts out in a small plane as a group of friends prepare to go skydiving and then has the camera plummets out the plane with them in parachuteless free fall as the plane is destroyed. This is followed by even more crazed scenes running around an orchard area being pursued by one of the most outlandish looking aliens ever put on screen.
Fur Babies comes from Justin Long, the actor known for appearances in horror films like Jeepers Creepers (2001), Tusk (2014) and Barbarian (2022), along with a host of others, and his younger brother Christian who has become a director, having made one previous full-length film with the ghost comedy Lady of the Manor (2021). Fur Babies is the single most demented and crazed episode in the entire V/H/S series to date – maybe the most twisted anthology segment ever since the L is for Libido segment of The ABCs of Death (2012). It takes place perfectly innocuously as two animal rights activists secretly tape a visit to a pet minding service run by Libby Letlow. Things start calmly and then promptly get utterly twisted before we cut to Letlow with the two activists as prisoners in cages where she performs surgery to outfit them with paws and canine teeth and they are despatched to tear apart the other activists as they break in looking for them. Libby Letlow’s performance throughout, calm and more used to talking down to dogs than to people, is sublime.
The final segment Stowaway comes from Kate Siegel, better known as Mrs Mike Flanagan. She has appeared in all of his films and tv works since Oculus (2013), including memorable roles in Hush (2016), The Haunting of Hill House (2018), The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020) and The Fall of the House of Usher (2023). This represents Siegel’s debut as a director. (Mike Flanagan also writes the script for the episode). This is another UFO related piece as Alanah Pearce investigates an object in the desert, enters and it takes off. There is a fantastic shot where she turns and we suddenly see the Earth in orbit outside the window. Compared to the other pieces though, there are not quite the same fireworks here and it is a little quiet.
(Nominee for Best Supporting Actress (Libby Letlow) at this site’s Best of 2024 Awards)
Trailer here