Found footage horror has been with us since the Blair Witch began stalking three unlucky documentary filmmakers in the Maryland woods – and unlike the movie that started it all, most of it is not very good.
However, if you’re looking for a traditional, blood and guts kind of horror experience, the new V/H/S/Halloween (available to Shudder subscribers), is actually a fun watch!
This is the eighth installment of the V/H/S franchise, and I didn’t expect it to be much of anything. In fact, I expected to roll my eyes. I have come away pleasantly surprised.
V/H/S/Halloween is an anthology made up of five short films. To get my least favorite out of the way first, I was not a fan of Alex Ross Perry’s “Kidprint.” Some of that is for personal reasons – I spent too long a time researching vicious serial killer Andrey Chikatilo in my youth, and a montage of terrified children who are being tortured is not my thing.
“Kidprint” is also just cobbled together kind of hastily. Yes, the culmination is terrifying, and bitterly ironic, like most of the entries here, but it also felt rushed, unlike the other entries.
“Diet Phantasma,” directed by Bryan M. Ferguson, acts as the frame narrative of the anthology and centers around a new soda that’s packed with poltergeists. There are several interludes from “Diet Phantasma” sprinkled throughout the anthology, and they are fun in a very 1980s kind of way.
The really good stuff occurs in the three other short films. First of all, there’s Anna Zlokovic’s “Coochie Coochie Coo.” I love a good story of how never growing up has its consequences – and “Coochie Coochie Coo” is exactly that.
Two girls on their final trick-or-treating run before leaving for college get way more than they bargained for when they decide to knock on the door of a house that everyone else smartly avoids. There’s a certain Mommy living here – some obnoxious neighborhood kids have already tried to warn the girls about her, but if they had listened, this would not be a Halloween horror entry.
Mommy didn’t really want to be a mother, and is trapped in a hell of her own making. The girls are also now trapped. It’s a macabre narrative with themes of regression, and it’s very well done.
“Ut Supra Sic Infra” is a wonderful, and horrifying, tale of a Halloween night in Madrid that has gone all wrong. By the time the story starts, the bodies have already piled up, and now the police want the only survivor to recreate exactly what happened. Very bad idea!
When police investigative procedure goes up against demonic forces, there can only be one winner. Directed by Paco Plaza, this is a wonderfully shot, incredibly eerie and grotesque entry that focuses on both Satanic horror and the idea that maybe, just maybe, following protocol is not the most important thing in existence.
“Fun Size,” directed by Casper Kelly is a hilarious, gross, and stylishly shot tale of what happens when you’re too greedy on Halloween. Oh, and also it’s about what happens when you’ve decided to get engaged to a person you’re not in love with.
This is the kind of horror you watch with your friends – laughing and screaming throughout, and it’s perfect for the format of a short.
“Home Haunt” is the final entry in the anthology, and it’s another banger. For years, Keith has loved setting up an elaborate haunted house experience for his family and his neighbors. It’s a bonding experience for him, his wife Nancy, and their son Zack.
Kids do grow up, and as a teenager, Zack is completely sick of the tradition. He says it even gets him bullied at school.
Desperate to re-capture the lost Halloween magic, Zack steals an odd record from a creepy local store, thinking it’s just the thing the new haunted house needs. Desperation, in the horror tradition, leads to abomination, and Zack inadvertently unleashes real life monsters onto his family and his town.
Among the great entries in this anthology, “Home Haunt,” directed by Micheline Pitt-Norman & R.H. Norman, is particularly wonderful because you really get to know the central characters until all hell breaks loose. Also, this entry does a wonderful job of showing how staple, boring Halloween decorations, the beak-nosed witch, some dumb-looking zombies, can still have amazing horror potential in the right hands.
As far as the genre goes, I’ve always been a bigger fan of psychological movies, those which are subtler than V/H/S/Halloween. But even I can’t deny that this anthology genuinely delivers.
If you want violent, splashy horror to watch at your Halloween gatherings, and are running out of ideas for new films this year, this anthology has you covered.