I think by the time this comes out out here this movie will have had come out last year so: another year and another one of these things. I know for the last three of these bags of shit I’ve griped and moaned like a whiny baby and yet I still keep watching them so like I tell my dog when she makes me go get her ball I threw for her “who’s the sucker?” Obviously I am referring to myself because I would never call my baby such a terrible thing and I know it is my duty to make sure they are always safe, secured, healthy and entertained so it obvious that the sucker is me. So, as the sucker that I am, here we are again with some more faux videos wrapped around by a faux documentary and this time the good folks who commissioned this are reaching for the sci-fi angle and aliens and shit instead of a rock band that kills people or the amazing feat of transporting a video camera to hell or the rat man that lives in a tunnel or Medusa or that video cassette they found and used of your wedding night when everyone finished eating those pork medallions with that strange brown gravy and started chanting you know everyone all at once and that hole opened in the ground and those things came up out of it. I don’t remember how that one finished up since I think that was V/H/S 3 and that was years and years ago back when I used to drink hard liquor and maybe I just put it out of my mind or something but the footage was generally all grainy and scratchy and I was all ‘this hurts my eyes you kids!” and “you never take your jacket off before the groom!” and it reminded me of this one time in New Mexico whe-

Well, let’s go.

Stork: well, I guess. Um – did you like (rec)? I did, I LOVED (rec)2 – liked loved it so much smooch smooch hug. But I liked (rec) too and I guess, well, maybe the VHS people commissioned someone to “make us one of them short movies for our compilation things we do and make it like that Spanish thing with rabies in that apartment you know that one with the cute Spanish lady and make if video game-y too you know so we can teach todays youth because you know TikTok and you know we don’t care if it makes and goddamned sense cuz no one pays attention to anything anymore thx ill take a club sandwich with the jalapeño infused mayonnaise you know”. BUT, if we don’t think about how these police bust into this house looking for a stolen baby and encounter people they just start blowing away without due cause and the house has around seven floors and dozens of rooms and they have unlimited ammunition – if we lapse those parts – I suppose this was technically better than we normally see in these stupid movies. The blood effects seemed practical and squishy and they had this cool part where they stuck a camera on a chainsaw and did some head cutting off which was pretty cool. Around that we have to remember that the boss level boss is an alien bird feeding human blood and parts to those stolen babies, so there’s that. I guess for this series this one wasn’t too bad.

Dream Girl: This one was actually so shaky-cam and strobe light-y and loud that really I think it made me nauseous. I was there on the couch with this thing going on before me and I had to squint my eyes it was so dizzying and then there was so much flashing light that I never really knew what was happening honestly. These two paparazzi are trying to sneak pics of this starlet called Dream Girl and one goes into her trailer and she rips her face off and – again, not sure – she’s a robot? Or a goddess of evil? This is Indian so maybe I just didn’t understand from my middle of America upbringing and studies but soon she’s killing everyone and has one giant glowing eye and sticking electric cables in her stomach and ripping off people’s arms and wearing their faces. I don’t know – I probably just didn’t get it which wouldn’t surprise me.

I do have to be honest and say that after the initial motion sickness of it all, they take a steady cam approach to introduce Dream Girl and they do this dance number – AND I feel like no one who might ever read this place will ever believe me but I have some sort of fondness for when these types of movies put large groups together and they all dance around to the – uhhh – sitar-ish music?

Live and Let Dive: hmph. This is one of those GoPro on the head style shaky cam jobs but at least it was pretty clear. I feel like this concept was pretty good – some skydiving douches are set to jump out of a plane when they see a ufo out the window and then their plane is ripped apart. Lucky they all have parachutes on but for some reason, down on the ground, an alien is going around ripping them to shreds. I also feel like I failed to really understand why this alien fellow is so mad and rippy-to-shreddy but they’re all fucked. It’s no spoiler since this isn’t some big mystery movie but at the end of this the main guy is in an old pickup and gets sucked up into space so I just have to wonder again and again and again: where did the filmmakers of V/H/S get this footage? Did someone’s mother mail it to them as a keepsake? “Dear Peter, remember when we were in that orange grove? Such blessed memories. ❤️❤️❤️xoxoxo your mom, Diane”

Fur babies: Directed by Justing Long (and another person named Long): do you like Justin Long and his wacky sense of humor? I’m very iffy on him honestly. I liked him in Barbarian and Drag Me to Hell but can’t really think of anything else right this second, honestly. He’s not actually in this movie that I can see but it’s just oh so – I don’t know what I’m trying to say. It reminds of maybe something I imagined I saw sometime where a woman is sitting behind a desk maybe at work and recording your every conversation and she gets you to tell something about someone and you catch yourself and look at her and she’s smiling and pointing her finger at her cheek like she’s got big dimples and twirling her finger around and sings in some cutsie voice “I’ll never telllll” but you know you’ve just fucked something up and now what are you going to do shit.

In this one some animal protector-ists go infiltrate the home of this lady who takes care of your pets while you’re away and talks all cursive about poopies and treats and twirls her finger in her cheek dimples. Surprise she also turns people she doesn’t like into dogs. I always instantly hate any movie where they try and make some sort of -what’s the word – pathos by killing the dog and they don’t do that here or I would go find Long and fistfight the son of a bitch but this time the human dog things eat the people so it’s got some grisly effects but otherwise not so great.

Whatever happens now or in the future, I’ve never been able to get past his belly button rose tattoo in Jeepers Creepers.

Stowaway: one of the reasons I was medium excited to see this whole thing was this piece here, directed by Kate Siegel – who we all know is Mike Flanagan’s wife and I really like her work as an actress especially Haunting of Hill House which is one of my favorite things and Hush and Midnight Mass which I also loved. This is her first directing job and I was sure it would be Flanagan-y but it wasn’t at all and I can’t say that I loved it. This one is filmed out in the desert at night so everything is really black and white and grainy and reminded me of an old Patrick Troughton Doctor Who without him playing a recorder. And the moppy hairdo.

A lady goes out into the desert to interview some rednecks and film some lights in the sky. Luckily one night one of those lights zips down to earth and she finds the craft and goes in it and explores the thing. Suddenly it takes off back to Proxima Centari or wherever they’re headed and she’s fucked. Again and again and again and again – how’d these documentarians get this footage back from beyond the stars? They must be really good at digging shit up. Again, not my favorite or anything but it was kind of cool when the nanobot things tried to put her back together and they mixed her up with other things. Not that I could really see it too much but I think it did.

Abduction/Adduction: that’s what the title is on IMDB and I’m too lazy to look up the word ‘adduction’. This is the wrap around story and I feel like it’s probably the best of the bunch – up until the end. It’s very Lake Mungo-y documentary style and I was one of the people who really liked Lake Mungo. I won’t tell you how it ends but who am I kidding I sure will since maybe you can tell me I’m wrong and make sense of it.

These guys are doing some in studio style reporting on this old house and its immigrant family and this and that and other experts and photos and videos and ghosts and UFO debunkers and I thought it was all pretty good until they got to the last five minutes or so. People die and this guy starts filming everything and his experiences and people are talking about legends of this and that and it’s all going pretty good and the they get to the: “the following is the true footage the documentarians have spliced together and it it is left to the viewer to decide from here” disclaimer gimmick and we see two semi- cleverly mixed videos showing a guy sleeping from one angle and something approaching him from another, it approaches and approaches and it looks like what we see below and then – curiously – the camera suddenly goes down this sleeping fellow’s throat which didn’t make much sense to me and it guess it was getting the eggs it laid in his body out or something? I don’t really know – I’d really lost interest by then and had kind of given up.

FILED UNDER: WHY DO I KEEP WATCHING THIS SHIT AND ORANGE GROVES AND BOY IS JUSTIN LONG JUST SO FUNNY HA HA HA HA WHAT A GUY

P.S.:

P.P.S.: speaking of videos, my guy Steve Loggins recently got a beta module upgrade for making videos from prompts. I feel like it took a year just to get him trained to spell “Eric Undead” right so I’ll have to be patient here but I thought I’d share a couple on this beautiful post do we can see how things go.

This one is “robot shooting at giant monster with laser, scared woman watches”

Which should have been a moving version of this:

And this beauty is “1970s giallo, woman running from something”

Which should have been this:

I see we have a lot of work to do but I honestly think these are a little better than some of the VHS entries. Maybe!