V/H/S/Halloween Review

This review is based on a screening which took place at the 2025 Fantastic Fest Film Festival. V/H/S/Halloween will debut on Shudder in the United States on October 3.

Can you believe the V/H/S horror anthology series just premiered its eighth entry? Or that AMC’s horror streaming platform, Shudder, has released five V/H/S sequels in five calendar years? You'd think that rate of output might diminish in quality, but last year's V/H/S/Beyond is my favorite title in the entire franchise. V/H/S anthologies have become an October staple, and V/H/S/Halloween keeps the party going by channeling its inner Trick 'r Treat.

Admittedly, it's not a one-to-one comparison; Trick 'r Treat still holds top Halloween horror anthology honors. At five segments and a wraparound, V/H/S's latest collection of short features is a mixed bag of candy-coated frights. Chosen filmmakers use "Halloween" as a starting point and spin tales of terror from festive starting points, but the ordering of each segment feels off this time around, perhaps because not every concept sticks its landing. Instead of a continuously enjoyable watch that gathers momentum, V/H/S/Halloween periodically has to pick up the slack before we're once again howling with glee at gruesome All Hallows’ Eve mischief.

Of the bunch, Micheline Pitt-Norman and R.H. Norman's "Home Haunt" is the runaway winner. It's also the finale of V/H/S/Halloween, which smartly concludes with an explosive bang of do-it-yourself backyard attraction mayhem. It's a love letter to father-and-son-built haunted houses that pop up in suburban yards with a graphically violent twist, when a cursed record plays the “Song of Samhain” and brings otherwise kitschy homemade specters to life. The camera walks us through dungeon corridors and into green-faced witches' cottages where guests are brutally slain by Halloween decorations come to life, whether boiled in cauldrons or smashed to smithereens by burly executioners. It's a Pleasantville monster mash, trading dad jokes for death blows, and showcasing what the V/H/S series does best: spirited ideas, practical-effects-driven carnage, and maximum effort that makes the most of the tiny budgets of independent horror.

With the aforementioned five segments and a haunted soda wraparound, there's way more to V/H/S/Halloween than its memorable finishing blow. From goofy candy mascots who punish greedy thieves to possessed rotary telephones, the film's variety pack of miniature flicks strives to keep ideas fresh…and succeeds. However, those ideas can stray away from the indulgence of Halloween themes, finding an entry point through costume parties or by simply taking place on October 31st; the tie to Halloween is there, but that's not the argument. V/H/S/Halloween promises a sugar rush of thematic immersion that doesn't hold from segment to segment, nor do they all meet the mile-high standards of "Home Haunt.” Some aren't even in the same league.

Casper Kelly's "Fun Size" is on brand for the mad genius behind Adult Swim's Too Many Cooks, or more recently, Adult Swim Yule Log. The logline is simple: Take more than one candy from the bowl, and you die. The execution is much zanier, as too-old trick 'r treaters are pulled into said bowl and find themselves in a factory where rule-breakers are hacked into chocolate-covered treats. Kelly's madcap sense of humor is a little much, mixing hit-and-miss elements of a doomed rom-com into his caramel-filled recipe, but the hunt-and-stalk elements echo hilarious notes of the spoof Russian knockoff, "Five Nights Freddy: Secret of Mimic," except with Captain Crunch cannons and Cosmic Brownie minions. This is what I want from my V/H/S entries: limitless originality on a shoestring budget that goes for broke with gusto.

However, while "going for broke" is a bonus, the gamble doesn't always yield bulletproof results. It's almost impossible for an anthology to have no misses, given how “x” number of segments take their own swings versus one full-length, thought-out narrative, and V/H/S/Halloween is no different. Her Smell director Alex Ross Perry delivers the bleakest, most vile chapter with "Kidprint," which is also my least favorite of the bunch by a country mile. What feels like a Tim Robinson or Tim and Eric sketch quickly becomes a troubling commentary on society's inability to prevent child murders, but on a personal note, it sucked me right out of V/H/S/Halloween. That's the danger and beauty of anthologies: Every viewer will have their own highs and lows. Unfortunately, for my tastes, "Kidprint" is a gusty whiff.

The remainder – Anna Zlokovic's "Coochie Coochie Coo," [REC] co-director Paco Plaza's "Ut Supra Sic Infra," and Bryan M. Ferguson's wraparound, "Diet Phantasma" – all get the job done to varying degrees. Zlokovic's take on haunted houses and adult baby fetishes has its fun with a nasty creature dubbed "Mommy," as two petrified girls flee from a lactating monster worth its chills and thrills. Plaza's possessed police procedural is a little less enthusiastic, but wraps on some disgusting bodily mutilation (hell yeah). And then there's "Diet Phantasma," a ridiculous and quite rowdy horror-comedy about a poltergeist-flavored carbonated beverage that keeps massacring focus group testers.