Larry and Ayesha, a pair of private investigators, break and enter into the house of Kyle, a college student supposedly gone missing, after his mother hasn't heard from him in a couple of days. Inside the house, the pair discover a bunch of VHS tapes, which gradually clue the duo in as to what happened to Kyle.
- Tape 49: The wraparound. Larry and Ayesha discuss and watch the collection of tapes that Kyle has amassed, and as they watch them, things become more and more surreal.
- Phase I Clinical Trials: Herman Middleton has recently lost his eye in a car accident. He undergoes an experimental procedure in which his ruined eye is replaced with a cybernetic eye with a camera put into it, which records everything it glimpses. It's not long before long Herman discovers his new eye allows him to see ghosts. The ghosts themselves become aware that Herman can sense them... and they aren't happy about it.
- A Ride in the Park: With a camera mounted on his helmet, cyclist Mike Sullivan goes for a bike ride in a state park. During his ride, Mike is attacked and bitten by a zombie. He eventually dies from his wounds, reanimates, and attacks a married couple, who become zombies themselves. The danger sharply escalates when the zombified trio discover and begin terrorizing a birthday party.
- Safe Haven: The film's longest segment. In Indonesia, Malik, his fiancée Lena, and his friends Adam and Joni manage to gain entrance to the compound of Paradise Gates, a mysterious cult. The quartet are actually a film crew who are hoping to shoot a documentary about the cult's mysterious activities with all sorts of hidden cameras. Little do they know that Paradise Gates practices demonic worship, and they take particular interest in Lena... who happens to be pregnant with Adam's child.
- Slumber Party Alien Abduction: Young brothers Gary and Randy attach a camera to their dog Tank to shoot videos around the house. When their parents leave on an outing, they invite their friends Shawn and Danny to play pranks on their older sister Jen and her boyfriend Zack. The prank war begins escalating as the kids and teenagers pull one prank after another, but things quickly become serious when aliens come to abduct them.
The film has received mostly positive reviews from critics who praised the clever irony and human melodrama in each segment (especially "Slumber Party Alien Abduction" which had immature, jerkass teenagers banding together against aliens). In contrast, the first V/H/S movie earned mixed reviews and critics saw the sequel as an improvement.
A Spin-Off film expanding on Slumber Party Alien Invasion, dubbed Kids Vs Aliens, was shown at Fantastic Fest in 2022 and is currently set for wide release on January 20, 2023. It is the second feature length adaptation of a V/H/S segment, the first being SiREN (2016).
This movie provides examples of the following:
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In General
- Apocalyptic Log: All of the tapes save for Tape 49. Although Tape 49 was in the process of becoming one itself.
- Ate His Gun: The rider at the end of A Ride in The Park, the cultists throughout Safe Haven and Ayesha herself during Tape 49. Also Kyle, the missing college student and center of attention in Tape 49. Not that it killed him for long.
- Black-and-Gray Morality: The characters aren't considered saints but the movie at least would put an effort in making the viewer feel some sympathy for them. Especially when they're literally fighting for their lives against forces far more sinister than they've ever witnessed.
- Black Comedy: Lot more than in V/H/S especially A Ride in the Park and arguably the end of Safe Haven.
- Call-Back: Like the first movie, this film opens on a scene of a couple (possibly with the same girl as the first) having sex. The difference being that instead of being taped over on a random VHS tape, this scene is recorded live by Larry, who narrowly escapes after a hotel maid gives away his position.
- Numerous photos of the old man from the first film can be seen in Kyle's living room, seemingly revealing him to be a relative of the kid.
- Camera Abuse: Just about every segment (except Tape 49) features this.
- Cosmic Horror Story: There is an increasingly strong implication of this throughout both the first and second film. It's implied in the ending that the tapes themselves are directly tied to it.
- Death of a Child: In Safe Haven and entirely in Slumber Party Alien Abduction. Possibly averted straight in A Ride in the Park since we see the father and his three children leave, but the fate of the other children that were at the party including the birthday girl is left unclear.
- The dead girl in Phase I Clinical Trials. Herman doesn't answer when Clarissa asks if he's ever hurt anybody, and considering he had an eye injury from a car accident, it's implied his accident killed both the girl and her father.
- Demonic Possession: Two examples.
- After all the people come kill themselves in Safe Heaven, they come back as violent thralls for the demon.
- In Tape 49, its implied that tapes did this to the Ayesha, judging by her.....movements after she attacks Larry.
- Developing Doomed Characters: The main characters of each short are MUCH less obnoxious than the ones in the original, starting with the wraparound: in the first the bookends centered around a group of college-age sexually abusive thugs breaking into someone's house to steal a videotape, while in the second they center around a no-nonsense private detective couple investigating the disappearance of a college student.
- Downer Ending: Every segment, but "Safe Haven" has a very interesting type of sad ending.
- Fate Worse than Death:
- We don't actually see the demon from "Safe Haven" kill Adam, and since he's his son, it's possible that he spared him. What the demon did to Adam after the camera went off is still a mystery, although it's possible that the demon grabbed Adam and flew him...somewhere, similar to Clint from the first movie.
- Since the aliens from "Slumber Party Alien Abduction" abducted the teenagers instead of outright killing them, one can only assume what kind of experiments they have in store for them...
- Especially if we remember The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger from the first film.
- Gorn: All of the shorts feature blood and guts to some degree, but A Ride in the Park and Safe Haven stand out. The former is very gory with lot of close-ups of zombies eating entrails, while the latter features multiple people getting stabbed or blowing their brains out, to say nothing of the childbirth scenes. Also, the ending of Tape 49.
- Gross-Up Close-Up:
- When the cyclist in "A Ride in the Park" eats his first victim, you can fully see all the intestines and organs he rips out the man's stomach. Crosses very heavily with
Nausea Fuel. - At the end of "Safe Haven", Adam starts Laughing Mad, with blood and mucus falling from his mouth and nose and practically hitting the camera lens.
- When the cyclist in "A Ride in the Park" eats his first victim, you can fully see all the intestines and organs he rips out the man's stomach. Crosses very heavily with
- Product Placement: iPhones make prominent appearances in Phase I Clinical Trials and A Ride in The Park.
- Rule of Scary: Like it's predecessor the movie lives off of this trope. There is really no logical explanation as to where the supernatural entities came from and how the zombie apocalypse started. They exist to provide fear and suspense to the people watching the movie.
- Trailers Always Spoil: It spoils various key elements from the film, including what are arguably some of the Money-Making Shots from "Safe Haven", where The men all shoot themselves in unison and the Father explodes.
- Never Trust a Trailer: One of the trailers is cut in such a way that the shots of the birthday party and the blood-covered man driving away in the van look like they are from the same short, when they actually aren't.
Tape 49
Private investigators Larry and Ayesha break into a missing college student's house to find out why he went missing and that is where they discover his stash of VHS tapes. This is the wraparound segment.
- Brown Note: What the tapes are meant to be.
- Continuity Nod: One of the VHS tapes played is from the previous film's wraparound segment, Tape 56.
- Facial Horror: Kyle, post-suicide, is missing the lower half of his mouth and his tongue is flapping out.
- Foreshadowing: That bang heard when the investigators are about to enter the house with the cassettes? Turns out that was Kyle blowing off his lower jaw to "make his own tape".
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: At the end, Kyle, the college kid the duo were meant to find, gives a thumbs up to the audience after he kills the other private detective.
Phase I Clinical Trials
Herman gets an ocular implant with a camera, but it suddenly makes him see ghosts. A young woman, Clarissa, joins him on the quest to escape the ghosts.
- Distracted by the Sexy: A unique horror and matter-of-survival variant of this trope, Clarissa attempts to get Herman's mind off the ghosts by flashing her boobs and having sex with him because as she explains, if Herman keeps paying attention to the ghosts, they grow more powerful.
- Downer Ending: It doesn't work.
- Her implicitly Creepy Uncle's ghost suggests she's used to using Sex for Solace to cope with his past abuse of her.
- Eat the Camera: A disturbingly literal version at the end.
- Eye Scream: Herman ends up cutting out his cybernetic eye with a razor. It only makes him unable to see what's attacking him.
- Force Feeding: The ghosts shove Herman's eye down his throat, presumably killing him.
- Foreshadowing: When Herman and Clarissa discuss the ghosts, Herman suggests removing his implant to get rid of them. Clarissa shoots this down, saying that it'll only keep Herman from seeing the ghosts instead of outright getting rid of them. At the end of the segment, an insane Herman uses a straight razor to cut out the implant. Just as Clarissa said, this does nothing to help him, as the ghosts (now unseen to him) proceed to throttle him.
- I See Dead People: Herman's eye and Clarissa's cochlear implants let them respectively see and hear ghosts.
- Meaningful Name: As pointed out in the commentary track, the two main characters both have meaningful names that are Stealth Puns on Live-Action TV shows from The '90s: Clarissa delivers Exposition about the supernatural elements, so it can be said that she "explains it all". Herman's ocular implant causes him to be able to sense ghosts, so the problem is essentially in his head.
- Our Ghosts Are Different: According to Clarissa, they're all around us, but people are very rarely able to sense them. If you can, the ghosts can tell, and the more you interact with them — i.e. even so much as look at them — the more they can interact with you in turn. And they're not kind.
- Post-Modern Magik: Ocular and aural implants that allow people to see and hear the frequencies at which ghosts operate.
A Ride in the Park
A bike rider who runs into the middle of an unexplained Zombie Apocalypse in the park gets bitten by a zombie and turns into one. He then becomes a crucial catalyst of the apocalypse.
- Alas, Poor Villain: The ending, where Mike puts himself down after regaining his humanity. Although seeing how he was a mindless zombie, it may be difficult to actually classify him as a "villain".
- Autocannibalism: When he reanimates, Mike takes a bite out of his own arm, but he doesn't find it palatable.
- Birthday Episode: A little girl holds her birthday party during the zombie apocalypse, although she most likely died after blowing out her candles.
- Blood from the Mouth: Zombie bite victims puke up a bunch of blood before they transform.
- Body Horror: A few of the zombies have their intestines trailing along the ground.
- Boom, Headshot!: A guy with a shotgun manages to headshot a few zombies before he's tackled from behind and eaten.
- Car Fu: One party-goer runs over Mike in an SUV.
- Driven to Suicide: Mike blows his brains out due to Even Evil Has Loved Ones.
- Dying as Yourself: An undead Mike accidentally butt-dials his girlfriend, the sound of her voice seeming to reawaken some vestiges of humanity within him. Realizing his horrific state, he proceeds to grab a discarded shotgun and put himself down.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: At the end, the zombified Mike accidentally butt-dials his girlfriend. Hearing her voice prompts a moment of clarity within him, causing him to grab a nearby shotgun and blow his brains out.
- Eye Scream: Mike gets one when a father of three girls stabs his eye with a skewer. He later pulls the utensil out by hand, taking his eye and optic nerve with it.
- Fallen Hero: Mike and the Good Samaritan couple were all decent people willing to help out someone in danger before they turned into cannibalistic zombies.
- Fingore: The first victim has all the fingers on one of his hands bitten off.
- Gun Nut: Apparently one guy with a trucker hat came to a little girl's birthday party with a double-barrel shotgun. He might be a case of Properly Paranoid when the zombies stage a surprise attack on the party.
- Made of Iron: As a zombie, Mike is able to endure two baseball bat swings to the head, a skewer to the eye, a shotgun blast to the chest, and even getting run over by a car. Even the camera on his helmet somehow survives all that abuse.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Mike, when he regains his memories and consciousness, was probably thinking this as he just killed a few people and tried to kill more.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: The Good Samaritans are bitten and infected, turning into zombies as consequence for their good deeds.
- No Name Given: Other than Mike, who is the protagonist, everyone else doesn't have an on-screen name. The ending credits even address Mike as "Biker".
- No Zombie Cannibals: A zombified Mike tries to eat his own arm, but only takes one bite before spitting it out in disgust. He also stops eating the first man he kills after that man comes back as a zombie.
- Non-Indicative Name: The title doesn't say anything about zombies, and while a ride in the park does appear, it's only an insignificant detail.
- Our Zombies Are Different: They can remember who they used to be. At the end, Mike becomes cognizant enough to recognize the voice of his girlfriend on his phone and, after realizing what he's become, kills himself.
- Papa Wolf: A father of three girls successfully escapes and drives his daughters to safety, away from Mike.
- Perspective Flip: Usually, zombie films require you to see from the side of the living humans at a third-person narrative. This segment shows you a first-person perspective from the zombie's eyes. It turns out that the humans aren't that dangerous to the zombies than vice versa, as Mike was shot, stabbed, and beaten up with a baseball bat.
- Skewed Priorities: One woman just lies on the ground grieving for a deceased friend of hers even though she can see for herself that zombies are all around her.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Sandwich: The birthday cake and barbecued burgers and hot dogs are abandoned when their potential eaters run away to avoid getting eaten themselves.
- Too Dumb to Live: One surviving piece of footage came from a party attendant while he was subdued and eaten alive by a female zombie. Why stand still in the middle of a zombie-infested party? Same goes for that guy who came with a shotgun, but stood completely still while shooting zombies and forgot to check for blind spots.
- Villain Protagonist: Mike gets turned into a zombie and stays as one until the end.
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Twice, just before Mike (and the person who inevitably bites him) transform into zombies.
- Would Hurt a Child: Mike chases three little girls to eat them because they were the slowest and easiest prey.
- Zombie Apocalypse: A first-person found footage recording of one at that. What's truly ominous is that this apocalypse has no apparent cause, and it's far from stopped by the end of the segment.
Safe Haven
A news channel crew investigates an Indonesian cult.
- Affably Evil: Every bad guy, particularly Father and the man with the shotgun who requests that Adam (albeit aggressively) not to interrupt while he is about to blow the Decoy Protagonist's brains out. After completing the deed, he thanks Adam and blows his own brains out.
- Apocalypse Cult: Paradise Gates.
- Chest Burster: A 9-foot tall goat/human hybrid demon (Baphomet?) bursts right out of his human mother's host body. What'd you expect?
- Dark Messiah: The leader of the cult, Father, is presented as this, as he goes on about how he and his flock will be lead to Heaven. Not to mention the demon thing at the end...
- Death By Child Birth: Horrifically played straight, where a demonic goat-like creature bursts out of Lena, killing her.
- Decoy Protagonist: The story begins from the POV of Malik, the leader of the crew. He is killed off by a cultist and the story shifts to the POV of Adam, his best friend and the guy who impregnated his fiancé.
- Evil Sounds Deep: The demon.The Demon: "Paaaapaaaaaa....."
- Go Mad from the Revelation: Adam loses his mind after hearing the demon call him "Papa", and he starts Laughing Mad.
- God of Evil: The cult worship one. He goes on one hell of a rampage after he is born.
- Hope Spot: Adam manages to get in his car and quickly drive away from the cult's compound. Cue the demon randomly appearing and ramming the car off the road...
- Laughing Mad: This is how the tape winds up concluding, with Adam going insane when he learns that the demon is his child.
- Ludicrous Gibs: Father suddenly explodes into a cloud of blood and guts after he cryptically tells Adam "It is fulfilled."
- No Name Given: While the demon isn't named, it is a goat/man hybrid, so it appears to be Baphomet.
- Pipe Pain: Adam momentarily arms himself with a pipe to defend himself as he goes after Madame and the women who abduct Lena.
- The Reveal: Three times.
- Paradise Gates, the "community" the film crew's investigating, is actually a suicide cult.
- Lena gives birth to a demon that resembles some kind of Antichrist.
- The demon is Adam's son.
- Satan: Given that it sports a goat head, horns and bat-like wings, the demon is most likely the devil himself.
- It bears a closer resemblance to Baphomet
, a pagan deity often used to represent Satan.
- It bears a closer resemblance to Baphomet
- Sequel Goes Foreign: This segment brings the action to Indonesia, after the prior film was set entirely in the US.
- Shirtless Scene: Father removes his shirt when the "time of reckoning" commences. He also sports some nasty markings and scars all over his body.
- Slashed Throat: Joni the cameraman has his throat slashed after Father attacks him.
Slumber Party Alien Abduction
A group of children and teenagers engaged in a "friendly" prank war amongst themselves get abducted by aliens.
- Alien Abduction: The aliens' motive for abducting the kids is never stated, though it could be because they intend to dissect them or capture them for experimentation to study their biology.
- Alien Among Us: One alien spies on the kids while hiding in the lake, without being visible from the surface, indicating that the aliens have camouflaging abilities.
- Aliens Are Bastards: Their morality could be considered colder than that of humans. They ruthlessly pursue and abduct the kids, and they have no qualms about violently shoving a dog that gets in their way, or indirectly causing the dog's death via dropping it from their tractor beam.
- Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Gary, Randy, and Jen spend the first few minutes pranking and annoying each other, but once the aliens show up, they've got each others' backs. Not that it matters in the end...
- The Bully: The kids and teens are extremely cruel to each other, just to get some cheap laughs out of it. In the end, they're forced to work together and run for their lives to find refuge from the aliens.
- Coitus Interruptus: Jen's brothers and their friends prank her by interrupting her having sex with Zack with blaring lights and loud music.
- Disguised Horror Story: The segment starts off fairly lighthearted, with two brothers playing with their dog, having their friends come over for the titular slumber party, and pranking their older sister and her boyfriend with water guns and strobe lights...but then the aliens arrive. From there things escalate very quickly.
- Downer Ending: The aliens succeed in abducting all the kids, and poor Tank ends up falling two stories after the tractor beam shuts off, either dying or at least being seriously injured.
- Dwindling Party: The aliens round up all six children while in the house. Zack is the first to go, Danny and Shawn are never seen again after the aliens barge in, (likely meaning they were brought to the spaceship or drowned in the lake), the remaining three escape the lake before running off into the woods, where they get snatched one by one, with Gary getting beamed up into the aliens' spaceship.
- Free-Range Children: Randy and Gary see their parents' absence as a golden opportunity to run wild and have fun. The parents did trust the teens (Zack and Jen) to be looking out for them, but those two would rather be partying, swimming, and having sex than babysitting.
- The Greys: The aliens resemble them, though they're much taller than the standard depiction. They look more like Greys crossed with Deep Ones, actually, considering their aquatic faculties. It's also rare in sci-fi that grey aliens are taller (let alone same height) than humans.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Zack, after arming himself with the brother's dad's shotgun, volunteers to go protect everyone, but he immediately gets captured. Later on, Jen sacrifices herself so that Gary and Tank can get away, though it's wasted when he's nevertheless captured moments later.
- Hollywood Darkness: The aliens wait until nightfall for the invasion. They were always there, even in broad daylight, but when night comes, they cut the power to the house so that their spaceship remains the only source of light in the region to easily lure in the kids. It works.
- Idiot Ball: The teens use their dog Tank as the cameraman for their Go Pro, but they never bother to check the film at all, since the dog spotted an alien in the lake.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: The teenagers and children are cruel to one another, and play sick pranks just to be trolls, but the alien invasion makes them band together.
- Kick the Dog: The aliens literally do this. It also crosses into Shoot the Dog, as they're only interested in the humans, allowing poor Tank to drop from a good two-story height.
- Monster Threat Expiration: The aliens, which were initially shown to aptly strike at lightning speed, walk and crawl towards the children at the pace of the dead in the subsequent scene.
- Mood Whiplash: While all the segments have a gradual shift in tone, this one has the strongest shift, mainly because of the ear-piercing white noise that suddenly interrupts the teenagers' laughing and pranks on each other.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Tank's barking helps the aliens spot the remaining humans.
- Off-the-Shelf FX: The shots from Tank's point of view are achieved with a camera attached to an ALF doll: Since all you see of the dog stand-in is a pair of furry ears, this isn't too obvious.
- Please, Don't Leave Me: Gary screams this to Tank as the aliens beam him onto their ship.
- Police Are Useless: The cops that Jen called never arrive. The police lights in the woods that the teenagers encounter turns out to be a trap set up by the aliens. Who knows where the real cops were while the kids were running through the woods getting chased by aliens?
- Shout-Out: The aliens appear to be modeled after Slender Man, who also mostly targets human children/teens, is incredibly tall and slender, and is associated with white lights and capable of ear-piercing sounds.
- The Slacker: Jen has an important exam that's either tomorrow or 2 days from now, but she'd rather be swimming in a lake with her boyfriend and throwing a party at home with him.
- Teens Are Monsters: These kids can get as creative with their bullying as the typical guard at Guantanamo Bay's detention camp. They lock one of their own inside a dog cage, spray him with aerosol, and leave him bent over with no room to stretch.
