Emotional Horror: Mike Flanagan & "V/H/S Beyond"
How he makes horror resonate with audiences
The last movie I watched (that wasn’t Dukes of Horror Podcast-related) was V/H/S Beyond, which premiered on Shudder in October.
V/H/S is a franchise of horror anthology movies, each containing five or six unrelated “found footage” vignettes. They’re fun and popular. The abbreviated length of each segment cuts out one of the found footage genre’s weaknesses: that it usually takes a long time to build up to the scary parts.
I was especially excited for V/H/S Beyond because it contains a short, titled Stowaway, written by Mike Flanagan and directed by Kate Siegel1. This is especially welcome in a year where we haven’t gotten a new Flanagan show (here’s hoping his adaptation of Carrie will hit our screens in spooky season ‘25!)
Real quick: Mike Flanagan is my favorite creator. Eventually I want to write a series that deep dives on all of Flanagan’s works. It’s a huge undertaking, and I’m slowly working on a format that will make it easy to tackle in manageable bits. Think of this as a trial run.
I’ve often tried to pin down what makes Flanagan’s works so gripping. I think I can demonstrate a little bit of that by comparing Stowaway to the other four shorts in V/H/S Beyond. None were bad, but Stowaway was a step above.
So let’s get in it! Spoilers, spoilers, spoilers!
What happens in Stowaway
Stowaway follows Halley, an aspiring documentarian, as she interviews locals about a UFO sighting in the Mojave Desert.
Throughout this short, the footage often cuts to that of Halley’s daughter’s birthday party. The girl is seen playing with a lizard toy, which Halley has with her and often films as though she is interviewing it. When she realizes she’s taping over the birthday footage, she says, “Just one more reason Haley’s a shitty mother,” then, “There will be other birthdays.”
She explains the problems of interstellar travel, stating that traveling to our closest neighbor star would feel like four years to the passengers while centuries would pass on earth.
While camping in the desert, Halley follows a light in the sky which leads her to a spacecraft. Inside she finds terrariums containing earth creatures in stasis. She cuts her finger and discovers that the craft is equipped with nano-technology that immediately heals the injury, though it leaves her finger scaly and claw-like. “I guess it doesn’t have a setting for humans,” she says.
Halley eventually tries to leave but discovers that the entrance has disappeared. The craft takes off, repeatedly slamming her against the walls. The nanobots continuously heal her, both keeping her alive and making her less and less human.
The last shot is of the lizard toy floating in front of the camera, with Halley’s garbled voice saying “no more” in the background.
The other shorts
Damn. What an exceptional short. But before we get into why it's so great, let's quickly recap the other shorts from V/H/S Beyond so we have something to compare it to. Again, spoilers.
Stork: A special ops team called W.A.R.D.E.N. is investigating a series of 17 infant abductions when they encounter a strange bird-like creature. Stork reminded me of walking through a decent haunted house.
Dream Girl: Two paparazzi are determined to get salable images of the hottest actress in Bollywood–but she ends up being a homicidal robot. This was the goriest short in the anthology, and also the least memorable and exciting.
Live and Let Dive: A group of friends are attacked by aliens while skydiving. This is the short with the most unique concept, and I really, really liked it.
Fur babies: A PETA-esque group of activists investigate an in-home doggy daycare where the proprietor is surgically turning people into dogs. Directed by Justin Long. I found this one the most disturbing and least enjoyable to watch—but it definitely was effective!
Why Stowaway is so good, and what it reveals about Flanagan's method of storytelling
Let's get into the analysis. Note that none of the other shorts are bad; they are all at least decent and whether one resonates with you or not is a matter of personal preference. I’m trying to illuminate where Flanagan’s strengths lie, and why they are particularly compelling to viewers like me.
One thing that sets Mike Flanagan apart from many horror genre creators is that he knows the importance of an emotional hook. You need a human element.
This makes Flanagan’s horror especially haunting. Unlike gore-focused directors, Flanagan’s scares resonate because they’re deeply tied to human fears and failures. The horror of Halley’s fate is amplified by the loss of her relationship with her daughter. This kind of layered horror is why Flanagan’s work endures with fans who crave meaning beneath the scares.
In other horror media the human element is often put on the back burner in favor of the horror aspects–the gore, the kills, the chilling premise. This is why horror movies are notorious for having one-dimensional characters; they're more or less fodder for whatever terrible fates await them.
Flanagan manages to balance character and emotion with scary imagery almost perfectly. Most of Flanagan's works are perfect mergers of horror and another genre. The Haunting of Hill House, by far his most famous and beloved creation, is equal parts horror and family drama. The Haunting of Bly Manor blends horror with romance.
Of course, having fully fleshed out characters is tough to pull off in a twenty minutes. Two of the other shorts, Stork and Live and Let Dive, attempted to include such an element. In Stork, one of the members of W.A.R.D.E.N. had their infant son stolen. In Live and Let Dive, our POV character spends much of the runtime desperately searching for his wife after they are separated.
The other two shorts make no attempt for an emotional hook. Fur Babies seems intent on making you dislike every single character–even the “good” guys are overzealous PETA-types that most viewers will find annoying–and Dream Girl ignores the opportunity to make us empathize with Tara, who really is being mistreated by her handlers.
Now let's consider Stowaway. The script never attempts to use its limited time to explain Halley’s motivations. We never find out what's driving her to create this documentary, though we can make inferences from our shared cultural background. What we do know, however, is that it's detrimental to her relationship with her young daughter. Accidentally taping over the birthday party footage is a metaphor for how she's both losing out on precious time with her daughter and prioritizing her search for UFOs.
“There will be other birthdays,” she tells herself, and we the viewers get a sickening feeling in our stomachs that this is tragically untrue.
This emotional arc is delivered through quick, inobtrusive little beats. The blips of birthday footage. Halley’s admission that she's a shitty mom. And, of course, the toy lizard.
Oh, yes. The lizard. At first I thought that Halley was estranged from her daughter, which would have been bad enough. But the lizard reveals otherwise. She's Flat Stanleying that lizard. One can imagine her daughter giving it to her to keep her company.
This means her daughter is expecting her to come back. And she's not going to. And it's all Halley’s fault. She's the one who is away from home, she's the one who enters the unknown spacecraft. It's all because of her hubris.
Another trick that Flanagan often employs is the lack of a true villain. The aliens are shown to be benevolent when they honor the interviewed girl's request to not take her hamster. We can extrapolate that they mean Halley no harm and would let her off - if they knew she was there. The nanobots healing her would be an altruistic thing in most contexts. That they have the unintended effect of prolonging her suffering is an accidental source of true horror.
And that's the other fascinating thing about this short: Halley’s fate is by far the most disturbing that we see on V/H/S Beyond. Maybe it's not as gross or as violent as some of the other deaths–in fact, with the way it's filmed we don't see much at all, just a hint of feather, claw, spider legs, and tentacles.
But think about it: a minimum of four years being constantly subjected to radiation and blunt force trauma, the very thing trying to save you not only turning you into something monstrous, but preventing you from the relief of death.
The other deaths might be gory and violent, but they're quick. Halley's fate isn’t explicitly shown, but the idea of it lingers. And to make it all that much worse, there's a young girl left behind on earth who never knew what happened to her mother.
A true living hell. Flanagan does it again.
H. H. Duke is a writer, author, and podcaster. Most importantly she loves horror! For more book recommendations, horror movie reviews, and other spooky things, subscribe to H. is for Horror now!
What I’m Reading
Come With Me by Ronald Malfi
Very Gone Girl-esque. I read another Malfi book, Small Town Horror, last month. He definitely likes to play with tense and voice, doesn’t he? Coincidentally, I find Malfi and Flanagan to be very similar, especially in how they portray horror elements.
Don’t forget to check out the most recent episode of The Dukes of Horror Podcast where we discuss the cult classic horror comedy musical, The Rocky Horror Picture Show!
I hate to not give Kate Siegel her due. It feels like I’m brushing a woman aside in favor of talking about her husband. However, I’m choosing to focus on Flanagan because all the things I’m highlighting are present at the story/script level, and Flanagan is the one who wrote the script. My history is also with Flanagan as a writer/director. And frankly, I’m not really sure how to separate a director’s influence from the screenwriter’s influence.