Believe it or not, we’re now up to our eighth installment of handheld, anthology series V/H/S with the last five entries hitting on a yearly basis thanks to the good people of Shudder. I have to be honest, I’ve actually started to really enjoy waiting for a brand new chapter of this enjoyably uneven franchise, because no matter what the win/loss record tends to be, it’s something of a kick to unwrap five new scenarios (plus wraparound) to dive into. Yes, sometimes you’ll unearth a dud, but then you may also turf up a Raatma, a Lily or that fucked-up entry from Gareth Evans and Timo Tjahjanto that instantly makes up for any inevitably weaker ones.
So what goodies do the V/H/S guys have for us this year? Well, as you can probably guess from the title, the theme for 2025 is Halloween which allows a new crop of indie fear flingers to go town on the spookiest season there is. But does the famously unpredictable quality ratio for this franchise mean that this installment favours tricks over treats? Time to press play and find out.
As usual, we’re gifted a multi-part wraparound segment to kick things off and this time around we have “Diet Phantasma” to get us started which sees the tireless and sadistic efforts of Blaine Rothschild, the head of The Octogon Corporation, as he tests the secret ingredient of his new, eponymous soft drink with impressively grotesque results. However, from here we soon move onto “Coochie Coochie Coo”, who introduces us to Lacie and Kaleigh, two high schoolers who decide to ironically trick or treat despite being too old. Their piss taking antics soon turn sour when the last house they hit turns out to be the haunted abode of “The Mommy”, a legendary figure who leaves a constant trail of breast milk and squirming fetuses in her wake who turns her victims into plump-cheeked, adult babies.
Next up is “Ut Supra Sic Infra”, which has us bouncing between phone footage of a Halloween massacre and a recorded investigation that sees officers bring the sole survivor and prime suspect, Enric, back to the scene of a crime that saw the eyes ripped clean put of the victim’s heads. Needless to say, when the police start to experience the same sensations as the dead partygoers, expect a lot more occular damage before the night is through.
Arguably the most bizarre of the bunch is “Fun Size”, which sees yet another bunch of people way too old to trick or treat find themselves tucked into a nightmare dimension after they violate a “take one only” rule taped to a bowl of unregular candy. As they flee from a chocolate-headed demon named Fun Size, the unlucky ones find themselves chopped into pieces and turned into treats themselves.
Taking a more serious turn is “Kidprint” which sees the owner of an electronics store try to protect the children of a town terrorised by a kid killing sadist by creating a children’s video ID service to dissuade the fiend. However, soon the guy unsurprisingly finds himself stumbling upon the killer with predictably nasty results.
Finishing things off is “Home Haunt” where a humiliated son feels he’s grown too old to continue helping his dad stage his extravagant haunted house for the neighbourhood. A disappointed patriarch agress that this year will be the last, but when a haunted record is played on the big night, unforgettable memories are created when the decor comes to life…
With the unifying theme of Halloween driving V/H/S’s eighth installment, there’s a noticable sense that the series is making more of a shift into deliberately goofier territory which proves to be something of an interesting choice. Usually, the sillier entry of a V/H/S batch tends to be the weakest, however when stacked alongside one another, it turns out that the overtly nastiest of the bunch, Alex Ross Perry’s Kidprint, proves to be the weakest of the six stories. With a plot that mostly hinges on the torture and flaying of children, it just feels like the director is channelling the wrong kind of mean spirited tone that trades in being scary or tense for just being needlessly vicious. In fact, a good example of a more serious tone working alongside the crazier entries is Paco Plaza’s straight forward shocker, Ut Supra Sic Infra that is genuinely the only entry here that actually even remotely approaches scary as it veers smoothly into possession territory with some savvy use of the well worn found footage theme the franchise has diligently stuck with. Pound for pound, it’s probably the best made of the group, but them considering Plaza co-directed [REC.] (aka. one of the greatest found footage movies to ever do it), it’s hardly surprising – but among the juddering bodies, levitation and impressive eyeball vomiting, you feel that the entry might have felt more at home in one of the earlier sequels that tended to be a bit more po-faced than this one.
The remainder of the short stories actually end up all being fairly reminiscent of one another as Anna Zlokvic’s Coochie Coochie Coo, Casper Kelly’s Fun Size and R.H. & Micheline Pitt-Norman’s Home Haunt all virtually have the exact same set up. There’s a setup that finds a bunch of people experiencing some Halloween-themed fuckery that places them inside a hostile, monster-filled environment and then the rest of the story falls back on reliable found footage conventions as we get the POV of everyone running around screaming before we get some fucked-up deaths. But while this sounds worryingly repetitive, it perfectly encapsulates a Halloween Maze aesthetic that proves to be incredibly fun.
It also helps that each of the deploy deploy some impressively twisted visuals, be it the sight of the six-titted Mommy and her puffy-cheeked, doe-eyed slaves; a man having his cock and balls chopped off and turned into candy; or even witnessing a cameoing Rick Baker get bloodily mauled to death by a flying sheet and while genuine scares may be thin on the ground, the added feel of a crazed fairground ride is definitely worth the trade off. In fact, I’d go as far to say that this might be one of the most even run of quality the franchise has ever had and if Bryan M. Ferguson’s nicely ludicrous Diet Phantasma had been a full installment and Kidprint had been the wraparound, we might have had a chance of a franchise best. I mean, who doesn’t love the idea of a haunted soda made from “poltergeist extract” that kills people in a variety of exaggerated ways.
Still, ever since its resurgence on Shudder back in 2021, a sense of guaranteed quality is never really what I’ve come to the latest V/H/S for. What I want from them is a bunch of frenzied tales where the sheer unevenness of the thing is part of the fun – almost like biting into an apple and hoping you don’t find a hidden razor blade. Does V/H/S/Halloween maybe play the same notes one too many times and does the single iffy entry tend to take up out of the experience? Sure, but isn’t that the risk that comes with any anthology movie? Keep them coming thick and fast Shudder and I’ll see you in time for… (dare I suggest) V/H/S/Xmas?
🌟🌟🌟🌟
We Have Issues 