Mixed Bag of Tricks and Treats

13 years after the first V/H/S made its debut, the franchise attempts to return to the nastiness of the original lo-fi horror anthology with V/H/S/Halloween. Featuring five new segments (six, including the wraparound) from emerging and established genre filmmakers, the latest installment is another mostly entertaining gore-fest with a few gnarly tricks up its sleeve.

Spanning the ’80s through the early 2000s (and at least one alternate dimension), the eighth V/H/S film – the fifth under the stewardship of beloved horror streamer Shudder – starts off strong with “Diet Phantasma,” a wraparound segment that’s equal parts Cronenberg and bats**t cosmic horror. The “classified” footage documents a corporation’s trials of a new diet soda formulated with what essentially amounts to ectoplasm, which has increasingly gruesome effects on test participants.

Bryan M. Ferguson, a filmmaker best known for music videos for the likes of Garbage and Alice Glass, sets a darkly comedic tone that endures through the first short, “Coochie Coochie Coo,” a bonkers ode to the Weird House at the end of every street. Directed by Anna Zlokovic (Appendage), the short makes extensive use of practical effects – and no small amount of white, viscous liquids – for a segment that will draw comparisons to Zach Cregger’s Barbarian. The second short, courtesy of REC co-creator Paco Plaza, sees a young man helping authorities reconstruct what happened at a Halloween party, where all of his friends were found dead, their bones crushed, and their eyes gouged out (you don’t want to know where the eyes went).

Credit: Shudder

Both Zlokovic and Plaza’s segments feel a little long, with the latter, “Ut Supra Sic Infra,” feeling tonally out of place among the others. While enjoyable, Plaza’s short feels more conventional and lacks the nasty humor of the rest, including the third segment, “Fun Size,” from “Too Many Cooks” mastermind Casper Kelly. Four friends who are too old for trick-or-treating (a recurring theme in V/H/S/Halloween) discover a bowl of candy from brands they’ve never heard of, accompanied by the classic obnoxious instruction: ONE PER PERSON. What follows is a hilariously off-putting trip to another dimension in a short that goes all-in on a sick stoner joke, and ultimately feels exactly like a Casper Kelly joint on late-night Adult Swim (complimentary).

The fourth and fifth segments, “Kid Print” and “Home Haunt,” are hands-down the best that V/H/S/Halloween has to offer. Filmmaker Alex Ross Perry, whose credits include Her Smell, Queen of Earth, and the recent video-store doc Videoheaven, made what is easily the darkest and most demented short of the bunch. Set at the height of the stranger danger panic in 1992, “Kid Print” revisits the concept of video IDs – parents could visit their local Blockbuster, where an employee would make a videotape of their kids stating their names and facts about themselves, which could then be circulated in the unfortunate event of their kidnapping. In hindsight, the practice was extremely morbid and fully insane, and it’s perfect fodder for Perry’s exceedingly grisly short, which validates every parent’s worst fear while almost suggesting a sinister self-fulfilling prophecy at play.

“Kid Print” will be a tough sit for some viewers, but it’s the closest V/H/S/Halloween comes to capturing the forbidden-footage vibe the franchise has been chasing since its flagship installment. It’s also what makes “Home Haunt” such a satisfying closer, a sort of palate cleanser that throws you a handful of laughs with the scares. Directed by Micheline Pitt-Norman and R.H. Norman, the emerging filmmaking duo behind the upcoming Cosmetic, “Home Haunt” follows a dad who enlists his begrudging teen son for one last DIY haunted house – an annual tradition that’s lost its cool-factor as the son has gotten older. Dad finds the perfect addition at their local antiques store, which causes absolute chaos at the eponymous event.

With few exceptions, V/H/S/Halloween is a solidly successful addition to the long-running anthology series, though the nearly two-hour runtime reiterates an ongoing issue with the franchise, which could stand to cut its usual five or six segments down to four. In the streaming era, when cinephiles and filmmakers are advocating for increased theatrical attendance, a two-hour horror anthology is unfortunately exactly the kind of movie you end up waiting to watch at home, when you can zone in and out at will – which also makes Shudder the ideal home for V/H/S.

V/H/S/Halloween releases October 3 on Shudder.