V/H/S/Beyond

  The V/H/S series seems to have found a second lease of life, with the last four installments of the anthology series (out of seven) coming in at a yearly release schedule. This latest one comes with a science fiction theme. As usual, it's fun, but uneven. I personally found it a bit weak, but worthwhile; There's some good stuff there.

 The framing device is directed by Jay Cheel (he of the excellent Shudder documentaries Cursed Movies), and it's a mockumentary about a couple of VHS tapes with supposed proof of extraterrestrial life. The fragments, interspersed among other shorts, give a (necessarily) very abridged overview of UFO mania over the ages while telling the tale of a family that was convinced that they were visited by some sort of presence over the years. They do a token effort of foreshadowing the short they precede, but the tie-ins are extremely loose. The fake documentary itself is engaging enough, and features a few guest youtubers (the wizards at Corridor Digital put in an appearance), but it builds up to a conclusion that's mildly funny and wholly underwhelming.

 "Stork" kicks off things with the tale of a rogue police squadron raiding a derelict house that they suspect is home to a cult of baby-snatching cultists. Once inside it devolves into a series of shootouts against zombified enemies clearly modelled after action/horror computer games, down to the entrance of a chainsaw-wielding maniac and copious spurts of very fake-looking CGI blood.

 Overall it feels a little like a calling card to show what everyone involved can do. It's built around the reveal of a very bizarre boss creature, which did make me laugh out loud, and it's pretty fun overall so: mission accomplished.

 Virat Pal is next with a Bollywood-set story that includes the series' first musical number. Its first half is great, chronicling the attempts of two paparazzi (Rohan Joshi and Sayandeep Sengupta) to grab some 'candids' of 'Superstar Tara' (Namrata Sheth), an up-and-coming starlet. Unfortunately, thanks to a pretty underdeveloped plot development, it devolves into some mayhem that's rife with everyone's least favourite gimmick in found footage movies: someone running around with a camera through extremely dark places.

 Then comes "Live and Let Dive", to me the highlight of the movie, courtesy of F/X specialist Justin Martinez (he was involved in the very first V/H/S and in semi-spinoff Southbound*). It's about a bunch of dudes (of both sexes) who, while on a skydiving expedition get caught in the middle of an alien invasion. The character introduction is weak (I have very little tolerance for forced bluster), but once things get rolling it's a fucking blast: the action tracks our protagonists seamlessly from a disintegrating plane to a forced skydive to the orange grove below, while all the time some truly disturbing aliens (of the feral, murderous kind) hunt everyone down. Add some inventive gore and you've got a top-shelf entry into the series canon.

 Justin Long directs the next segment, in which a group of activists go to investigate a woman (Libby Letlow) who runs a dog shelter. This one's by far the worst of the lot: Letlow is great, and the introduction mines a lot of anti-humour out of her cheesy promotional video, but other than that it's a slog- overlong, mediocre... and for fuck's sake, out of all the things Long could revisit from his career, did he really have to choose Tusk?

 The great Kate Siegel helms the last segment, Stowaway, making her directing debut off a script written by her spouse Mike Flannagan. It follows Halley (Alanah Pearce), a would-be independent documentarist, as she investigates mysterious lights in the sky sighted at the Mojave desert.
 She does find what she's looking for, but in her pursuit of a story ends up in a horrible situation, made all the more horrifying by an absolute absence of malice. 
 Conceptually, this is excellent. It's the only story here that attempts to engage with a proper science-fiction mindset, and the concepts it plays with are sound (even if they fall in the softest possible range of the sci-fi spectrum). Pearce is also great as Halley, and thanks to a solid script, she's the only person in this movie who could qualify as a decent, rounded character.
 Unfortunately the filmmaking - by choice or circumstances - is too murky, making the latter half of the story uninteresting to look at when it should be awe-inspiring. It also suffers from a bloated runtime, which is a trait several stories in this V/H/S installment share. Siegel's talked about considering doing a musical, and then something with muppets (with Bryan Henson's involvement, no less). Overall I like Stowaway, but it's hard to wonder how those other ones would have turned out. As good as that last shot is, the movie really needed a bit more craziness.

 *: His involvement in the first V/H/S posits an interesting relationship between Siren in that one and the aliens here.