V/H/S Beyond (2024)

For the past few years, I have been watching Shudder’s V/H/S franchise. In 2021, there was V/H/S/94, which was decently good. Then 2022 was V/H/S/99, which I liked better. While I didn’t review V/H/S/85 last year, I did watch it and enjoyed it. This year, it’s V/H/S/Beyond and it’s scifi themed. I can’t wait to talk about it.

The “through-story” framework for Beyond is set up as an alien abduction documentary. In between all of the movie segments, experts tell us about a family that suffered from alien and paranormal experiences. The first movie segment is “Stork,” where a police unit is tasked with breaching a house that may be the center in a string of disappearing babies. Despite the fact that they hunt monsters, the unit comes upon more than they expected to find. “Dream Girl” is the next segment. A couple of paparazzi are told they need to get footage of the latest Bollywood starlet. Unfortunately, she is not treated well by her management and lashes out in revenge. In “Live and Let Dive,” a group of friends is celebrating a 30th birthday by going skydiving. As they are having fun before the dive, a flying saucer appears in the sky next to their plane. Needless to say, their skydive did not happen the way they wanted. “Fur Babies” is probably the most disturbing of the segments. It is also the only one that doesn’t really fit the scifi/alien theme. A group of animal activists go to investigate a doggie daycare center. Little do they know that the owner of the center loves dogs much more than she likes humans. The last segment of Beyond is “Stowaway.” A woman is in the desert investigating possible alien encounters. She sees a light fall from the night sky, which leads her to an alien spaceship. Of course, she sneaks inside. Which is actually a terrible decision.

I know that I normally give you a much deeper description of each segment. However, of all of the movies in the V/H/S franchise that I have watched, Beyond is, by far, my favorite. I love the science fiction and alien themes that run through the segments. Thankfully, all of the V/H/S movies are standalone. You don’t need to have watched previous versions in order to understand newer releases. If you don’t watch any of the other movies in the series, you need to watch this one. You won’t regret it.

Rating: A+

It's A Wonderful Knife | 2023 Christmas Movies

We’re ending this year with a slasher film. It’s A Wonderful Knife on Shudder. Will I regret this?

One year after a masked slasher kills a bunch of people on Christmas Eve, Winnie Carruthers (Jane Widdop) wishes on the aurora borealis that she was never born. She is immediately transported to another dimension where she was, in fact, never born. In this dimension, Winnie did not kill the slasher so the slasher kept on murdering townspeople. Now it is up to Winnie to right these wrongs.

This was an interesting take on It’s A Wonderful Life. Pretty much everyone in Winnie’s life who survived the original “Angel Attacks” were awful people. The only exceptions were her aunt Gale (Katharine Isabelle), Gale’s girlfriend Karen (Cassandra Naud), and Winnie’s classmate Bernie (Jess McLeod) who everyone called “weirdo.” So it’s a little understandable why Winnie wouldn’t want to be around them any more. However, wishing that SHE didn’t exist was a little much and it seemed a little out of character for Winnie. If they had made her more despondent that she had killed someone, maybe it would make some sense. As it is, it sounded a little more “emo teen” than George Bailey.

There were some good points. Justin Long is good at playing a terrible person, even though his fake teeth were a little distracting. Widdop and McLeod did a decent job at bringing their characters to life. They did a lot of dumb things that teenagers would probably do in that situation. (Instead of other slasher movies where they act like teenagers would make all of the right moves to keep from getting murdered.) In the end, it wasn’t the best slasher movie but it was a pretty good Christmas slasher homage.

Rating: Stay for the end credit song. It’s a banger.

Barbarian | Halloween 2022

Since there were so many movies that came out this year, I couldn’t pick the next scary movie to watch. My husband picked Barbarian for me. I didn’t know a lot about the movie so I agreed to watch it.

Tess (Georgina Campbell) has booked an AirBNB in a small neighborhood in Detroit. When she arrives at the house, she finds a man named Keith (Bill Skarsgård) already staying there. After finding out there is nowhere else nearby to stay, they decide to share the house for the night. The next day, after her job interview and while Keith is out of the house, Tess finds a secret door in the basement that leads to an underground maze of tunnels. Two weeks later, sitcom actor AJ Gilbride (Justin Long) has lost his job due to a rape allegation. He comes back to his house in Detroit to get ready to sell it. Even though he finds luggage and toiletries in the house, the property manager insists that no one has rented the house in a few weeks. Shrugging it off, he goes into the basement where he also finds the secret door. Excited that he could list that as more space in the house, he explores further.

Barbarian is a little all over the place. There are three separate storylines that all come together. Tess and Keith’s story takes place two weeks before AJ’s storyline starts and then there’s a man named Frank (Richard Brake) has a story that starts in the 1980s and ends when AJ finds him. It is a little jarring when they switch to another storyline. The transition between the three isn’t done very well so it takes some time before you realize what is going on.

With that said, I did like the horror aspect of the movie. The “monster” isn’t a new idea in horror movies. It has been done before. However, there is a bit of a twist that makes it slightly different. I think that twist is just enough to make Barbarian interesting. Take the time to watch it. Even if you hate it, it will give you pause the next time you book an AirBNB.