Movie Reviews
V/H/S/Beyond movie review & film summary (2024) | Roger Ebert
It’s not a Fantastic Fest without a “V/H/S” movie. For the last four years running, an installment in the Shudder Original series has premiered in Austin, leading us to the sixth in the series dropping this weekend in “V/H/S/Beyond,” before premiering on Shudder on October 4th. By now, the strengths and weaknesses of this series have been pretty well-established: clever concepts, inconsistent execution. The loglines for the segments in “Beyond” are some of the best in the series, finding new ways into horrific tales, this time either intentionally or coincidentally built around deformation. However, the execution often falters as if the entire film needed a bit more finetuning in some stage of production. While this is one of the better “V/H/S” anthologies of late, I can’t but wonder if they shouldn’t take two years to make the next one.
In this film’s wraparound segment, documentarian Jay Cheel gets to have some fun riffing on his own skill set in projects like the excellent “Cursed Films,” making a sort of faux streaming original docuseries about a pair of tapes that purport to show an alien encounter. The wraparounds often literally tie in and out of the anthology segments in this franchise, but this one is more thematic, setting up the recurring theme of the draw of seeing what feels impossible through a grainy home recording.
“Beyond” bursts into action with “Stork,” a shoot-em-up action segment from Jordan Stewart that sometimes plays like a first-person POV shooter zombie game. A group of officers are searching for some missing babies, including one of the cop’s own, and end up at an old house that’s been overrun by monstrous creations, one of whom is even wielding a chainsaw. Until its WTF ending, it’s the most straightforward segment, and it’s enjoyable on its own wacky action terms. Get in, blow up some bad guys, drop some wicked makeup effects, get out.
A more ambitious segment unfolds in Virat Pal’s “Dream Girl,” which actually allows the first Bollywood dance number in a “V/H/S” movie. The first half of this one is stellar, proving that Pal has a filmmaker’s eye, even through the shaky cameras of a pair of paparazzi chasing an Indian star. When one sneaks into the icon’s trailer, he discovers something unimaginable, and, well, chaos unfolds. And by chaos, I mean shaking, screaming, flashing lights, and loud noises. The truth is that using shaky cam to disorient the audience takes more skill than it looks, and this one just gets too confusing and nauseating.
I felt similarly about the shakiness of Justin Martinez’s “Live and Let Dive,” but it has SUCH a killer idea that it’s more forgivable. Not since the brilliance of “GoPro meets zombies” in “V/H/S/2” has this series found such a neat way to tell a horrifying story. In this one, a group of people are going skydiving for a 30th birthday when they basically, thousands of miles in the air, stumble upon an alien invasion. As their plane explodes, and half of them smash to the ground, the survivors are forced to race through an orange tree field to avoid the massive alien creatures now hunting them. It’s “District 9” with skydiving. Fun.
Less fun is Justin Long’s “Fur Babies,” which just proves that “Tusk” really messed up Mr. Long. A variation on that film’s deformation fetish, “Fur Babies” does feature some gnarly makeup effects, but, like a lot of these segments, it goes on too long. There’s no reason for “V/H/S/Beyond” to be almost two hours. I think the best thing future installments could do would be to tighten up the segments by about 15-20%. Almost every chapter in all six films could use a trim.
That’s true of even my favorite segment in this one, “Stowaway,” the directorial debut of the great Kate Siegel, from a script by her husband Mike Flanagan. The reason I responded so strongly to this one is that it doesn’t feel like other “V/H/S” segments. First, it’s truer to the title, actually looking like something found on a tape that’s been recorded over a dozen times. Second, it’s not reliant on disorientation, even if what Siegel chooses to hide gives it strength. It’s the story of a woman investigating stories of lights in the sky and what she discovers, closer to “Annihilation” than anything else. It’s weird but not merely in grossout terms or disorienting ones. It’s evidence that the best of the “V/H/S” segments don’t just think outside the box, they prove that there should be no box for this kind of filmmaking in the first place.
This review was filed from the premiere at Fantastic Fest. “V/H/S/Beyond” premieres on Shudder on October 4th.
Desert Warrior, 2026.
Directed by Rupert Wyatt.
Starring Anthony Mackie, Aiysha Hart, Ben Kingsley, Ghassan Massoud, Sharlto Copley, Sami Bouajila, Lamis Ammar, Géza Röhrig, Numan Acar, Nabil Elouahabi, Hakeem Jomah, Ramsey Faragallah, Saïd Boumazoughe, and Soheil Bostani.
SYNOPSIS:
An honorable and mysterious rogue, known as Hanzala, makes himself an enemy of the Emperor Kisra after he helps a fugitive king and princess in the desert.
With aspirations of being a historical epic harkening back to the sword and sandal blockbusters of yesteryear, Rupert Wyatt’s seventeenth-century Arabia tale is about as generic and epically dull as one would expect from a film plainly titled Desert Warrior. Yes, there appear to be real locations here, and there are some admittedly sweeping shots of various tribes storming into battle on horseback and camels, but it’s all in service of a mess that is both miscast and questionable as the work of a filmmaking team of mostly white creatives.
The story of Emperor Kisraa (Ben Kingsley, a distracting presence even with only one or two scenes) rounding up women from other tribes to be his concubines, which inevitably became the catalyst for a revolution led by Princess Hind (Aiysha Hart), uniting all the divided clans and strategizing battle plans for flanking and poisoning, is undeniably ripe for cinematic treatment. The problem is that what’s here from Rupert Wyatt (and screenwriters Erica Beeney, Gary Ross, and David Self) is less than nothing in the primary creative process; no one seems to have a connection to Arabic heritage or culture, but they have made a flat-out boring film that is often narratively incoherent.
Following the death of her father and escaping the clutches of oppression, the honorable Princess Hind joins forces with a troubled, nameless bandit played by Anthony Mackie (he totally belongs here…), who seems to be here solely to give the movie some star power boost without running the risk of white savior accusations. Whatever the case may be, it’s jarring, but not quite as disorienting as how little screen time he has despite being billed as the lead and how little characterization he has. It is, however, equally disorienting as some of the other names that show up along the way.
As for the other factions, Princess Hind talks to them one by one, giving the film an adventure feel that fails to capitalize on using beautiful scenery in striking or visually poignant ways at almost every turn; the leaders of these tribes also often have no character. There also isn’t much of an understanding of why these tribes are at odds with one another. This movie is filled with dialogue that consistently and shockingly amounts to vague nothingness. Nevertheless, each tribe doesn’t take much convincing to begin with, meaning that not only is the film repetitive, but it’s also lifeless when characters are in conversation.
That Desert Warrior does occasionally spring to life, and a bloated 2+ running time is a small miracle. This is typically accomplished through the occasional fight scene between factions that also serves to demonstrate Princess Hind coming into her own as a warrior. When the tribes are united in a massive-scale battle, and that plan is unfolding step by step, one certainly sees why someone would want to tell this story and pull it off with such spectacle. However, this film is as dry as the desert itself.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Robert Kojder
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=embed/playlist
‘4’, the opening track on Richard D James’ (Aphex Twin) self titled 1996 album is a piece of music that beautifully balances the chaotic with the serene, the oppressive and the freeing. It’s a trick that James has pulled off multiple times throughout his career and it is a huge part of what makes him such an iconic and influential artist. Many people have laid the “next Aphex Twin” label on musicians who do things slightly different and when you actually hear their music you realise that, once again, the label is flawed and applied with a lazy attitude. Why mention this? Well, it turns out we’ve been looking for James’ heir apparent in the wrong artform. We’ve so zoned in on music that we’ve not noticed that another Celtic son of Cornwall is rewriting an art form with that highwire balancing act between chaos and beauty. That artist is writer, director and composer Mark Jenkin who over his last two feature films has announced himself as an idiosyncratic voice who is creating his very own language within the world of cinema. Jenkin’s films are often centred around coastal towns or islands and whilst they are experimental or even unsettling, there is always a big heart at the centre of the narrative. A heart that cares about family, tradition, culture, and the pull of ‘home’. Even during the horror of 2022’s brilliant Enys Men you were anchored by the vulnerability and determination of its main protagonist.
This month sees the release of Jenkin’s latest feature film, Rose of Nevada, which is set in a fractured and diminished Cornish coastal town. One day the fishing boat of the film’s title arrives back in harbour after being missing for thirty years. The boat is unoccupied. And frankly that is all the information you are going to get because to discuss any more plot would be unfair on you and disrespectful to Jenkin and the team behind the film. You the viewer should be the one who decides what it is about because thematically there are so many wonderful threads to pull on. This writer’s opinions on what it is about have ranged from a theme of sacrifice for the good of a community to the conflict within when part of you wants to run away from your roots whilst the other half longs to stay and be a lifelong part of its tapestry. Is it about Brexit? Could be. Is it about our own relationships with time and our curation of memory? Could be. Is it about both the positives and negatives of nostalgia? Could be. As a side note, anyone in their mid-40s, like me, who came of age in the 1990s will certainly find moments of warm recognition. Is the film about ghosts and how they haunt families? Could be…I think you get the point.
The elements that make the film so well balanced between chaos and calm are many. It is there in the differing performances between the brilliant two lead actors George MacKay and Callum Turner. It is there in the sound design which fluctuates from being unbearably harsh and metallic, to lulling and warm. It is there in the editing where short, sharp close ups on seemingly unimportant factors are counterbalanced with shots that are held for just that little bit too long. For a film set around the sea, it is apt that it can make you feel like you’re rolling on a stomach churning storm one minute, or a calming low tide the next. Dialogue can be front and centre or blurred and buried under static. One shot is bathed in harsh sunlight whilst the next can be drowned in interior shadows.
Rose of Nevada is Mark Jenkin’s most ambitious film to date yet he has not lost a single iota of innovation, singularity of vision or his gift for telling the most human of stories. It is a film that will tell you different things each time you see it and whilst there are moments that can confuse or beguile, there is so much empathy and love that it can leave you crying tears of emotional understanding. It is chaotic. It is beautiful. It is life……
Rose of Nevada is released on the 24th April.
Mark Jenkin Instagram | Threads
Released through the BFI – Instagram | Facebook
Review by Simon Tucker
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