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V/H/S/HALLOWEEN (2025)
Label: Acorn Media International
Region Code: A,B
Rating: Cert. 18
Duration: 114 Minutes 44 Seconds
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 5.1 Surround with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen
Directors: Bryan M. Ferguson, Anna Zlokovic, Paco Plaza, Casper Kelly, Micheline Pitt-Norman, R.H. Norman
Cast: David Hayon, Samantha Cochran, Natalia Montgomery Fernandez, Elena Musser, Teo Panell, Lawson Gretson, Riley Nottingham, Jenna Hogan, Jake Ellsworth, Michael J. Sielaff, Stephen Gurewitz) and his assistant Bruce (Carl Garrison, Jeff Harms, Sarah Nicklin, Noah Diamond, Rick Baker
The long-running V/H/S found-footage anthology series offers it's eighth entry with the Shudder produced V/H/S/Halloween (2025), offering five Halloween themed tales of terror and a wraparound from directors Bryan M. Ferguson (Pumpkin Guts), Anna Zlokovic (Appendage), Paco Plaza ([Rec]), Casper Kelly (Adult Swim Yule Log), Alex Ross Perry (Her Smell), Micheline Pitt-Norman (Grummy) and R.H. Norman (Haji).
The wraparound for this one is fun and gruesome, directed by Bryan M. Ferguson, "Diet Phantasma", it feels like a gory riff on that scene from Halloween III: Season of the Witch wherein that hapless family have the Shamrock masks tested on them to horrific result, with the evil corporate messaging of Larry Cohen's The Stuff. In it the Octagon Co. are testing a new soft drink beverage called “Diet Phantasma”, love the name. We have CEO Blaine (David Hayon) and a small team at the company's research facility, where they are testing some sort of demonic/Lovecraftian tainted soda on unsuspecting test-testers, to what end is not initially clear, but apparently they want to launch this new diabolical soft drink by Halloween. This was good n' gory but repetitive and one-note, but I still sort of loved it for the unhinged gore.
The first segment proper is is "Coochie Coochie Coo", written and directed by Anna Zlokovic wherein on Halloween night two sarcastic high school trick or treaters, Lacie (Samantha Cochran) and Kaleigh (Natalia Montgomery Fernandez) come face to face with a malevolent spirit known as ‘The Mommy’, a six-tittied urban legend who is said kidnap children from their homes on the spookiest night of the year. The girls are dismissive of the legend, but when they knock on the door of a mysterious house they find themselves trapped in an impossible house with the lactating supernatural specter and a cadre of infantilized victims whom she has turned into chubby-cjheeked titty-suckers. The gore is not through the roof on this one but the dingy house setting is chock full of gross sour-milk lactation-ickiness and the look of the The Mommy (Elena Musser) is total nightmare fuel.
Next up is the Spanish language entry "Ut Supra Sic Infra", or As Above, So below, directed by Paco Plaza, who directed the [REC.] trilogy, wherein young man Enric (Teo Panell) is the sole survivor of a Halloween party massacre that centers on a cursed phone. After being interrogated by police, who are skeptical of his involvement in the bizarre deaths, he accompanies the cops crime scene to reconstruct the events – but the reconstruction summons the evil once more and we get a deeper dive into what befell his friends through what happens to the cops, which involved lots of eye-trauma!
Next, Casper Kelly’s "Fun Size", where four teen friends, Lauren (Lawson Gretson), Josh (Riley Nottingham), Haley (Jenna Hogan) and Austin (Jake Ellsworth), discover that in this mad gone world you don't eat the candy on Halloween night, the candy eats you! When the four teens disobey a sign next to an unaccompanied candy bowl that says
'one per person' they disobey and find themselves swallowed up by a candy bowl and sucked into a parallel reality where a humanoid candy-person named Fun Size (Michael J. Sielaff, Code 3) dismembers the teens and turn them into sugary treats. This one is bloody and slightly goofy in an Adult Swim sort of way, but also menacing and surreal way, feeling like a half-remembered nightmare. We get some candy themed kills which are terrific, geysers of colored gumballs and chocolate covered body parts, oh yeah.
The straight-up most violent and disturbing of the bunch is the Alex Ross Perry (Her Smell) directed "Kidprint" which tells the gruesome tales of a small town beset by a series of missing kids. A small electronics store run by Tim Kaplan (Stephen Gurewitz) and his assistant Bruce (Carl Garrison, Hostile) have started a program called Kidprint that video documents the kids before they go missing, a sort of child ID program which were popular in the late 8os/early 90s, but it turns out one of the store's employees hides a disturbing secret. This one reminded me a bit of old school gory SOV slashers like Video Violence and Cannibal Campout, the effects are low-budget but vicious and plenty gory with lots of skin-peeling, it's quite disturbing. If you are super-sensitive about seeing kids being harmed this one could be triggering, very bleak and twisted.
The last segment is far and away my favorite of this V/H/S entry, the Micheline Pitt-Norman (Grummy) and R.H. Norman (Haji) co-directed "Home Haunt" which has the most tasty Halloween vibes of them all. It opens with grainy super-8 looking footage of a home haunt in 1977 as a family construct their annual haunted house 'Dr. Mortis' House of Horrors' for Halloween, including their young son Zach who plays Igor for the spook house to his father's Dr. Mortis. It then moves ahead a decade or so, and while father Keith (Jeff Harms, Mank) and mother Nancy (Sarah Nicklin, The Disco Exorcist) are as spirited as ever to make a bad-ass haunted house for the neighborhood, their son Zach (Noah Diamond, They Don't Cast Shadows), now a cynical teenager is less than thrilled, as for years he has been ridiculed at school for playing Igor, they even named a dance after him. He doesn't want to be part of the haunt this year but is convinced to partake one last time by his mother, a new addition to the production this year is spooky Halloween LP his dad sort of stole from an antiques store, but when they start spinning it bursts into flames and wreaks paranormal havoc on the neighborhood folks who are partaking in the haunt, bringing the campy Halloween displays to life Waxworks style! I loved the Halloween vibes of this one and having this close out the anthology was good thinking. It also feature make-up effect legend Rick Baker (An American Werewolf in London) as a disapproving neighbor who straight-up only attends just so he can shit on it, but don't worry, he gets a proper bloody dispatch!
Despite ending on a high note I thought this entry showed some signs of series fatigue, despite seeing people run around a dark house by the light of a camera while something scary chases them is a tried and true found footage trope, it does start to get repetitive, even though "Coochie Coochie Coo" has some creepy elements it felt very 'been there, done that'. There's still plenty to love here for fans of found-footage frights, especially f you're a die-hard V/H/S fan, though I do wish the Halloween theme was a bit more prevalent and that the segments had more variation and swung for the fences more instead of relying on tried and true tropes - some of these fell like Halloween was just half-heartedly tacked on to fit the theme, but at least "Home Haunt" really nails the scare-season theme.
Audio/Video: V/H/S/ Halloween (2025) arrives on Blu-ray from Acorn media International in 1080p HD framed in 1.78:1 widescreen, with English DTS-HD MA 5.1 Surround audio with optional English subtitles. It looks and sounds solid, the HD image is superior to the Shudder streaming counterpart, less compressed with deeper blacks, the uncompressed audio delivers dialogue and the creepier elements just fine, zero complaints.
Onto t he extras, we get Filmmaker Audio Commentaries for all the segments, , 4-min Behind the Scenes for "Diet Phantasma" and a 6-min Behind the Scenes for "Coochie Coochie Coo", both of which are cool watches, offering some clearer images of the make-up effects and gore, and a peak behind the curtain of making a micro-budget scare flick. There is also also an inconsequential 51-sec KidPrint Deleted Scene, a 16-min Diet Phantasma Uninterrupted Cut which brings all the segments together for the wraparound, plus a the 2-min Diet Phantasma Commercial, and a 5-min Diet Phantasma Gallery. The single-disc release arrives in a UK-style oversized Blu-ray keepcase with a single-sided sleeve of artwork.
Special Features:
- Filmmaker Commentaries
- Behind the Scenes: Diet Phantasma (4:06), Coochie Coochie Coo (5:58)
- KidPrint Deleted Scene (0:51)
- Diet Phantasma Uninterrupted Cut (16:05)
- Diet Phantasma Commercial (0:27)
- Diet Phantasma Gallery (4:47)
Screenshots from the Acorn Media International Blu-ray:
