The V/H/S franchise has, over the past few years, become something of a staple for the Halloween season with an annual release on Shudder around the holiday. But the series refrained from actually centering around All Hallows Eve until this year’s V/H/S/Halloween, an anthology of short films where all of the entries take place on or around the season along with the usual caveat that the perspective must in some way be found footage. That requirement has waned a bit – of course, some of the shorts aren’t being filmed with an actual “tape recorder” anymore to allow for a more contemporary aesthetic – but V/H/S/Halloween offers a mix of stories both pre- and post-cell phone video. A framing device and five unconnected stories serve up tricks and treats for this holiday offering, and we’ll review each of them as a whole.
“Coochie Coochie Coo” (Anna Zlokovic)
The first actual segment post-introduction comes from Anna Zlokovic (Appendage, an episode for Bite Size Halloween), following two young ladies who are enjoying their last Halloween trick-or-treating before heading off to college. Their candy conquest takes a turn for the worse, however, when they knock on the door of a mysterious house that leads to a terrifying lair of rooms that are home to a frightening lactating Mommy and her kidnapped victims.
This short has a few things going for it, chief among them a pretty effective setup as the two girls are drawn into the house. Zlokovic’s hand-held footage does a good job of involving the viewer in the scares, and the way the camera acts as an observer almost mimics a fright house aesthetic as we push farther and farther into this torture dungeon – along the way encountering all kinds of unspeakable scares that truly seem like scenes from a scare zone. With that said, as “Coochie Coochie Coo” continues, its protagonists get more and more insufferable due to the constant shrieks and whimpering, as well as their general unlikability throughout the whole short. Mommy’s further reveal ends up being less effective the more the audience sees of her, too, with the whole thing ending up rather edgelord-y at a certain point (force-feeding breast milk, fetuses, lactation, etc) – though it also feels like there’s something of a point wrapped up in it, that we often see the birthing ritual as grotesque even as we continually wrest women’s choice away from them. While “Coochie Coochie Coo” has some compelling moments, it’s ultimately a bit too uneven and, at times, even annoying.
🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃/10
“Ut Supra Sic Infra” (Paco Plaza)
A take on the “as above, so below” motif, Paco Plaza’s “Ut Supra Sic Infra” follows an investigation into the mysterious deaths of a group of young adults who attended a Halloween party in a mansion and were all found dead missing their eyeballs, besides the sole survivor Enric.
There are actually two different perspectives to this short; it opens with footage from the investigation, and then intermixes video from the Halloween night party, showing the initial spell that is accidentally uttered Evil Dead-style as Enric recites the “as above, so below” phrase painted on the wall. As the police investigation continues to the house, they ask Enric to say the phrase again exactly as he did during the party and… well, the results are pretty predictable. This short feels a bit repetitive due to this intercutting of the two pieces of footage, and it doesn’t do all that much to distinguish itself from a pretty ho-hum possession story; however, Plaza’s direction of the upside-down shots and falling bodies is quite good. This one is simply a standard affair, though, and has the least explicit Halloween material of all the shorts.
🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃/10
“Fun Size” (Casper Kelly)
A group of adults decide to go out trick-or-treating, hitting a few houses before noticing there’s a strangely vacant house with a gigantic bowl of full size candy bars – except none of them have ever heard of the candy offered, and some of them are shaped rather… suggestively. After taking more than the allotted one item, the four of them are transported to a distorted candy-making factory where they find they’ve now become the product.
Unlike the other shorts in V/H/S/Halloween, Kelly’s “Fun Size” seems to be the only one taking itself a bit less seriously. While that’s generally fine, here it does seem a bit out of place considering the dark, grim subject matter surrounding it. It also stands out sharply, since Kelly’s direction emphasizes a more over-the-top and campy nature complete with what I would generously describe as “hammy” acting. There’s a good bit of fun to be had with this one, since it’s pretty specifically focused on a Halloween theme, features memorable monster figures, and makes more than a few tasteless jokes. But the laughs run thin on this one, and it feels ill-served sandwiched between the other more affecting shorts.
🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃/10
“Kidprint” (Alex Ross Perry)
Tim’s electronics store has been running a promotion during the Halloween season where parents can bring their children in to be filmed, creating a tape that parents can use in the event their child is kidnapped during a string of serial killer murders in the area. After a girl goes missing on Halloween after a recent filming, Tim goes back to the store that night to find that his employee has been the one abducting the children and filming their grisly tortures.
“Kidprint” is an absolutely haunting short. It reminds in a lot of ways of the most effective snuff films from Sinister, with a very authentic feel to it that completely inserts the audience into the story. The 1990s setting adds to this particularly disquieting atmosphere with the use of the stereotypical video camera quality, along with vintage Halloween decorations that will be an obvious standout for holiday fans. Perry doesn’t shy away from showing child violence, and it can be particularly upsetting at times. While some will most likely be put off by the subject matter and the short’s feel-bad conclusion, it never feels intentionally exploitative – simply presenting a plausibly realistic depiction of child predators in a small town.
🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃/10
“Home Haunt” (Micheline Pitt-Norman and R.H. Norman)
This one follows a family that always creates a haunt scene for Halloween; this year, their son is checked out and doesn’t want to participate, but the father manages to snag a vintage Halloween sounds record from a curio store as the centerpiece of the haunt. On Halloween night, they invite the neighborhood over to begrudgingly participate, and after playing the record, the entire haunt comes to life.
Husband-and-wife writer/directors Pitt-Norman and Norman create something much akin to an adult-themed Goosebumps! episode with “Home Haunt,” which is suitably both off-kilter and charming enough to remain entertaining throughout its run. Some great camera effects and a showcase of the haunt itself lend creativity to the short, all while remaining pretty faithful to the Halloween aesthetic (complete with a pretty mean-spirited ride on a malevolent witch’s broom). All told, this one is fun and inventive, perfect for a Halloween offering.
🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃/10
“Diet Phantasma” (Bryan M. Ferguson)
The wraparound story for V/H/S/Halloween is “Diet Phantasma,” which serves as introduction, interludes, and conclusion to the film. It focuses on a soda company testing their new Diet Phantasma product on unsuspecting juvenile delinquents, all shown in orange jumpsuits with varying levels of aggression. Throughout the interludes, “Diet Phantasma” shows different taste tests with its victims, all suffering from unique deaths after ingesting different variations of the Phantasma formula.
Ferguson’s framing story is an intriguing concept, something I’ve never really seen or heard of in terms of “possession” setups. However, it also doesn’t come together all that well in action, since the short never clarifies exactly what the company is looking to accomplish besides an ad later that promises “a ghost in every can!” Still, the framing device remains engaging throughout without repeating any violence twice, resulting in a pretty fun set of intrusions between shorts.
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Like most anthologies, V/H/S/Halloween is a mixed grab bag of some mean-spirited tricks and some treats you might want to trade. With that said, it’s mostly a solid outing in this long-running series, and it’s certainly a fine way to spend a Halloween night. It could even become an annual viewing tradition.
