The long-running horror anthology V/H/S is currently running on an annual schedule thanks to American streamer Shudder: this 2024 edition is now available on home video in Australia for non-subscribers to catch a look. As with Shudder’s previous instalments, the new film operates as a curate’s egg: five horror-themed short films with an even mixture of good and bad parts. V/H/S/Beyond has adopted a science fiction approach this time around. Generally speaking, the more each short embraces that theme the better it is.

This in mind, it’s not a surprise that the weakest segment is “Fur Babies” from writer/directors Christian and Justin Long. It does not follow the science fiction theme at all. Instead it follows a group of animal activists who investigate a dog day-care service, only to discover her activities are a lot more disturbing than they suspected. It feels relatively silly, and tends to mock and satirise the activists in a manner that feels very unfair. It also feels rather too indebted to Kevin Smith’s divisive horror film Tusk (2014), in which the latter Long brother starred.

Slightly more successful is Virat Pal’s “Dream Girl”, in which a paparazzi duo try to secure exclusive footage of a Bollywood actress with unexpectedly bloody results. It is only partially effective, although it is nice to see the V/H/S series continue to embrace Asian filmmakers in addition to their North American counterparts.

Jordan Downey’s “Stork” plays out like an episode of Cops gone horribly wrong, with a special police unit storming a two-story house and finding a zombie apocalypse inside. It resembles a first-person shooter videogame with its heavy emphasis on gun violence, and gets stranger – and better – as it goes. There is some excellent effects work at play here, and it is well paced and structured.

Justin Martinez’s “Live and Let Dive” takes advantage of a sensational premise, and certainly punches well above its weight in terms of special effects and visual execution. A skydiving plane is caught between a UFO and two US Air Force fighter jets, and the ensuing disaster is high on suspense and energy. As with the best V/H/S segments, this really feels as if it could be stretched out to feature length without difficulty.

That is also true of the film’s best segment “Stowaway”, directed by actor Kate Seigel and written by her husband, noted horror filmmaker Mike Flanagan (Doctor Sleep). Alanah Pearce plays an amateur journalist following a series of strange lights in the sky, who has a genuine close encounter when one of them – an alien spacecraft – lands in the desert. While less viscerally horrific, the segment is perhaps the most disturbing of the set – and certainly the smartest. Pearce delivers a strong central performance.

Seven films in V/H/S does feel as if it is beginning to flag. A lack of an overall coherent focus certainly hurts Beyond: when three of the shorts are so tightly focused on UFOs and extra-terrestrials, the other two wind up feeling deeply out of place and ineffective. A framing sequence by Jay Cheel lacks urgency or suspense, and that also leads to the film feeling slightly drawn out and weak. An eighth film is currently in production for a 2025 release: hopefully it can learn the lessons of this iteration and present something a little more tightly assembled.