Intensity 🩸🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Hot take: It’s time to shelve the V/H/S franchise and do an autopsy scrub. V/H/S Halloween is the latest iteration of the venerable horror anthology franchise. V/H/S has become an enabler (and, by way of production, Shudder and Bloody Disgusting as well) of ugly, uninspired, and dull shaky-cam short films. With one exception, I don’t think any of these segments would be good enough to make an average horror-film festival short-film block. It’s a sad indictment of a once-proud series.
You could have seen this coming. V/H/S Halloween follows on from what had been a return to form with V/H/S Beyond (2024), but the quality of the segments had a considerable backslide with this set of offerings. V/H/S/99 (2022) and V/H/S/85 (2023) showed some of the erosion of the quality of the productions.
The franchise allows the use of grainy, desaturated, shaky-cam footage, which, from an aesthetic perspective, trades craft for verisimilitude. To make this exchange work, however, the found-footage format has to feel authentic. Blair Witch is an excellent example of something that feels natural. In V/H/S Halloween, everything feels very staged. The acting is arch, and the locations feel like sets, devaluing whatever credibility the found-footage style is trying to establish.
I fully recognize that I may be paddling against the current with my evaluation, but given the quality of technology available now, can we please leave the ’80s and ’90s behind and allow home video to at least enter the 21st century? The production quality delivered here can only be described as shoddy. Perhaps this is how you like your horror, but it doesn’t suit me at all.
Segment: “Diet Phantasma”
Writer and Director: Bryan M. Ferguson
Diet Phantasma is the bridging connective tissue frame narrative in V/H/S Halloween. It is divided to show between each of the other films, a trusted format for the V/H/S series. The conceit of this narrative is observing test subjects for Diet Phantasma, a soda infused with a deadly poltergeist. There is a lot of vomiting and bleeding orifices, with an exploding head or two. Why? The company is evil. After the first portion of the segment plays out, you know the theme, and it goes on ad nauseam, with predictable results. This is mean-spirited gross-out material, absent the cleverness that it purports to have.
Segment: “Coochie Coochie Coo”
Writer and Director: Anna Zlokovic
Wow, this segment was a drag. Two teenage girls, Katie and Lacie, go out on Halloween for their last year of going door-to-door trick-or-treating. They have a mean streak to them and steal candy from younger kids. They end up trapped in a house with “Mommy,” a demonic presence oozing milk from multiple teats, that punishes kids who are too old to be trick-or-treating. Color desaturated and full of too-quick jump cuts, this segment made me queasy, both by its subject matter and its production.
Segment: “UT Supra Six Infra”
Director: Paco Plaza
Writer: Alberto Marini and Paco Plaza
Full admission. I fell asleep during this segment and had to re-run it for review. “Ut Supra Six Infra” is Latin for “As Above, So Below.” A group of Halloween revelers engage in what should be a raging party, but a mysterious phone in the middle of the room dooms the group into having one of the partygoers get possessed by the phone, and consuming the eyeballs of his mates. The dying partiers get pinned to the ceiling and then dropped onto a pentagram on the floor. END!
Segment: “Fun Size”
Writer and Director: Casper Kelly
This is the segment that is worth watching V/H/S Halloween for. A group of young adults goes trick-or-treating, which, as we have learned earlier, is a bad idea if you are too old to be knocking on doors for candy. They arrive at a house with weirdly obscene candy that none of the group has ever heard of. The candy bowl sucks each of the four trick-or-treaters into the house, where they discover that the candies are made up of chopped-up humans. Inside the house, Fun Size, a mascot terror chases them throughout the facility, dispatching them one by one. This story felt original, was fun, and colorful… a reprieve from the other stories.
Segment: “Kidprint”
Writer and Director: Alex Ross Perry
In 1992, a suburban American town is being terrorized by a serial killer targeting kids and teenagers. Tim turns his video store into a business where parents can get a video ID of their children. On Halloween, another teenage girl goes missing, and Tim finds to his horror that he has been betrayed by his employee, who has been working behind the scenes to mutilate and kill kids brought into Tim’s store. This will satisfy gore hounds, but the entire story is repellent and far-fetched.
Segment: Home Haunt
Director: R.H. Norman
Writers: Micheline Pitt and R.H. Norman
Home Haunt uses the cursed object as its focus. Keith is one of those Home Haunted House fanatics who likes to put on an extravaganza in his front yard. His demoralized son, Zach, plays his Igor assistant, and this year, he is equipped with a record titled “Halloween Horrors” which Keith has shoplifted from a local antique store. Convinced that this will make his production over the top, he is not ready when the record unleashes hell on the neighborhood. Fun, if predictable. Notably, this segment features makeup legend Rick Baker in an acting performance. (I’ll bet that he lent his practical effects services as well.)
Concluding Thoughts:
I recognize that the V/H/S series, in general, isn’t to my taste. Found-footage films often feel like cheap excuses in a time when small filmmakers have access to advanced digital technology. There are so many talented short film writers out there. It could be so much more. V/H/S Halloween is thematically consistent, but it is also consistently shoddy. Fun Size was a good bit, and Home Haunts was amusing, but largely the segments were tiring. The advertising would like to believe this is a horror comedy, but mostly, the humor doesn’t pass muster. My colleague Liz often shuts down a film she’s not vibing with. With an anthology, I feel obligated to give the next segment a watch, especially with the provenance of the V/H/S legacy. This left me feeling let down.
How can you improve the V/H/S franchise? Perhaps fewer segments? Perhaps more established voices? Moreover, it’s time to ditch the nostalgia and make something that is at least good to look at. The poor quality videotape vibe has run its course. If you want to do an eighties nostalgia piece, look at what Scott Derrickson (The Black Phone) and Ti West (particularly House of the Devil) do for reference. You don’t need to make the product look old and shitty like this.
V/H/S Halloween is rated R for gore, violence, and profanity. This film is readily available as part of a SHUDDER subscription.
Review by Eric Li
