V/H/S/Halloween Review

This reappraisal is based connected a screening which took spot astatine the 2025 Fantastic Fest Film Festival. V/H/S/Halloween volition debut connected Shudder successful the United States connected October 3.

Can you judge the V/H/S fearfulness anthology bid conscionable premiered its eighth entry? Or that AMC’s fearfulness streaming platform, Shudder, has released 5 V/H/S sequels successful 5 calendar years? You'd deliberation that complaint of output mightiness diminish successful quality, but past year's V/H/S/Beyond is my favourite rubric successful the full franchise. V/H/S anthologies person go an October staple, and V/H/S/Halloween keeps the enactment going by channeling its interior Trick 'r Treat.

Admittedly, it's not a one-to-one comparison; Trick 'r Treat inactive holds apical Halloween fearfulness anthology honors. At 5 segments and a wraparound, V/H/S's latest postulation of abbreviated features is simply a mixed container of candy-coated frights. Chosen filmmakers usage "Halloween" arsenic a starting constituent and rotation tales of panic from festive starting points, but the ordering of each conception feels disconnected this clip around, possibly due to the fact that not each conception sticks its landing. Instead of a continuously enjoyable ticker that gathers momentum, V/H/S/Halloween periodically has to prime up the slack earlier we're erstwhile again howling with glee astatine gruesome All Hallows’ Eve mischief.

Of the bunch, Micheline Pitt-Norman and R.H. Norman's "Home Haunt" is the runaway winner. It's besides the finale of V/H/S/Halloween, which smartly concludes with an explosive bang of do-it-yourself backyard attraction mayhem. It's a emotion missive to father-and-son-built haunted houses that popular up successful suburban yards with a graphically convulsive twist, erstwhile a cursed grounds plays the “Song of Samhain” and brings different kitschy homemade specters to life. The camera walks america done dungeon corridors and into green-faced witches' cottages wherever guests are brutally slain by Halloween decorations travel to life, whether boiled successful cauldrons oregon smashed to smithereens by burly executioners. It's a Pleasantville monster mash, trading dada jokes for decease blows, and showcasing what the V/H/S bid does best: spirited ideas, practical-effects-driven carnage, and maximum effort that makes the astir of the tiny budgets of autarkic horror.

With the aforementioned 5 segments and a haunted soda wraparound, there's mode much 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 assortment battalion of miniature flicks strives to support ideas fresh…and succeeds. However, those ideas tin stray distant from the indulgence of Halloween themes, uncovering an introduction constituent done costume parties oregon by simply taking spot connected October 31st; the necktie to Halloween is there, but that's not the argument. V/H/S/Halloween promises a sweetener unreserved of thematic immersion that doesn't clasp from conception to segment, nor bash they each conscionable the mile-high standards of "Home Haunt.” Some aren't adjacent successful the aforesaid league.

Casper Kelly's "Fun Size" is connected marque for the huffy genius down Adult Swim's Too Many Cooks, oregon much recently, Adult Swim Yule Log. The logline is simple: Take much than 1 candy from the bowl, and you die. The execution is overmuch zanier, arsenic too-old instrumentality 'r treaters are pulled into said vessel and find themselves successful a mill wherever rule-breakers are hacked into chocolate-covered treats. Kelly's madcap consciousness of wit is simply a small 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," but with Captain Crunch cannons and Cosmic Brownie minions. This is what I privation from my V/H/S entries: limitless originality connected a shoestring fund that goes for broke with gusto.

However, portion "going for broke" is simply a bonus, the gamble doesn't ever output bulletproof results. It's astir intolerable for an anthology to person nary misses, fixed however “x” fig of segments instrumentality their ain swings versus 1 full-length, thought-out narrative, and V/H/S/Halloween is nary different. Her Smell manager Alex Ross Perry delivers the bleakest, astir vile section with "Kidprint," which is besides my slightest favourite of the clump by a state mile. What feels similar a Tim Robinson oregon Tim and Eric sketch rapidly becomes a troubling commentary connected society's inability to forestall kid murders, but connected a idiosyncratic note, it sucked maine close retired of V/H/S/Halloween. That's the information and quality of anthologies: Every spectator volition person their ain highs and lows. Unfortunately, for my tastes, "Kidprint" is simply 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" – each get the occupation done to varying degrees. Zlokovic's instrumentality connected haunted houses and big babe fetishes has its amusive with a nasty carnal dubbed "Mommy," arsenic 2 petrified girls fly from a lactating monster worthy its chills and thrills. Plaza's possessed constabulary procedural is simply a small little enthusiastic, but wraps connected immoderate disgusting bodily mutilation (hell yeah). And past there's "Diet Phantasma," a ridiculous and rather rowdy horror-comedy astir a poltergeist-flavored carbonated beverage that keeps massacring absorption radical testers.