While this may sound like a buddy weekend with Bigfoot to some, others of us see it as a trip to the Bermuda Triangle. The great news is that the most “UFO-ey” segment is the wrap-around story, which does develop into something really nifty over several visits. But that conspiracy wrapper acts like a sci-fi horror piñata that is filled with plenty of bloody bug-eyed goodies once broken open. Instead of orange paper slow burn the outer story employs, the other video segments go for head on, sending the camera straight into the eyes behind the sky. The action gets intense, almost to the point where everything starts resembling a first-person shooter game. This style does increase the impact of the special effects, which look exquisitely ghastly in the found footage format.
“…enough buttons to keep the blinking lights on in your skull tonight…”
The story I enjoyed most was “Stowaway”, which is no surprise as it was directed by Kate Siegel and written by Michael Flanagan. This is the one episode that “goes to space,” and it is lovely. It looks so achingly real due to the format. The rest are earthbound, with many milking the invader teat. The first wave of invaders look and act a lot like zombies, but that is all a clever lure to get you to look closer and closer. The aliens in “Live and Let Dive” are flat-out awesome, a variation on the traditional grays with a vulva third eye. Christian Long and Justin Long’s contribution “Fur Babies” is clever in several different directions at once. First, it is science fiction horror without being about aliens. Second, it uses two different vehicles of found footage being the online ad and the investigative video. Third, it is pretty damn funny.
A lot of what seems to steer the entries is a throwback to the spectacle reels of the Nickelodeon era in cinema’s infancy. What isn’t gore? FX scenes are high-adrenaline POV quick fixes, just like the ones in Bigelow’s Strange Days. Nothing wrong with this, as the splatterpunk attitude might be what has kept the V/H/S series going for so long. So the little green sequel from Mars passes the test, as any long-running series that doesn’t run out of gas when leaving the planet has staying power. V/H/S Beyond punches enough buttons to keep the blinking lights on in your skull tonight.
"…a sci-fi horror piñata that is filled with plenty of bloody bug-eyed goodies"
