"The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger"

"The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger" is a short featured in the 2012 anthology horror movie "V/H/S". Directed by famous mumblecore director Joe Swanberg and written by his frequent collaborator, Simon Barrett.

One of the first computer screen films, it follows James, a trainee doctor, as he chats with his girlfriend Emily via video chats. Emily has been experiencing strange occurrences in her apartment, and James begin to view stranger and more sinister happenings via the webcam. This films was a precursor to the most well-known computer screen film, Unfriended in 2014, and can be seen as one of the pioneers in the genre and what pushed the style of film making into the horror genre.

This short was preceded by "Tuesday the 17th" and followed by "10/31/98".

Plot
This segment is shown through computer video chats. Emily talks to her boyfriend James, a trainee doctor, about a strange bump on her arm and how it reminds her of an accident she had when she was younger. After witnessing a small, childlike entity rush into her room and slam the door shut, Emily believes her apartment is haunted. Her landlord claims that no children have ever lived in the apartment, but Emily is unconvinced. During her next video chat with James, an increasingly frantic Emily digs into her arm with a scalpel to find out what the bump is, but James urges her to stop before the wound becomes infected.

Emily attempts to contact the being, but it knocks her out. James quickly appears in her apartment and surgically removes an alien fetus from Emily's torso. Aliens are using Emily as an incubator for alien/human hybrids, and James has been working for them and removing the fetuses for some time. The aliens erase Emily's memory, and James mentions that the arm bump is a tracking device. In their next chat, a badly injured Emily believes she sustained her injuries after wandering into traffic in a fugue state. She reveals that the doctor James recommended has diagnosed her as schizoaffective, and tearfully says that James deserves a better, more normal girlfriend. He assures Emily that she is the only person he wants to be with, but once their chat ends he begins a new chat with a different woman who has the same bump on her arm and also believes James is her boyfriend, showing that the aliens are using more than one person as an incubator.

Cast

 * Helen Rogers as Emily
 * Daniel Kaufman as James
 * Liz Harvey as The New Girl
 * Corrie Fitzpatrick as Girl Alien
 * Isaiah Hillman as Boy Alien
 * Taliyah Hillman as Little Girl Alien