V/H/S Halloween: A Dead Video Format Turns Deadly
By Thom Ernst
Rating: B+
Despite its uneven history, the V/H/S found-footage horror anthology endures. V/H/S Halloween marks the eighth entry in the franchise, and somehow it manages to feel just as effective, maybe even more so, than its predecessors.
But this one takes no prisoners. Greedy trick-or-treaters, teenage pranksters, tainted candy, obsessive holiday home decorators, even a possessed Halloween soundtrack album—nothing and no one is safe.
A scene from Coochie Coochie Coo in V/H/S Halloween
The V/H/S franchise thrives on the grime of its format: the hiss of static, the abrupt frame jump, the distorted image. It all adds to an uneasy, accidental authenticity, as if what we’re watching wasn’t meant for us to see. That sense of voyeurism has always been the franchise’s strength.
Where earlier entries hinged on someone, or a group of someones, stumbling across a cursed tape (and the even rarer discovery of a working VCR), V/H/S Halloween takes a looser approach. Instead of a through-line, we get an interstitial: Diet Phantasma, Bryan M. Ferguson’s Halloween-themed short about a disastrous soft-drink consumer/product test.
It doesn’t connect directly to the other stories, but works as a divider between one nightmare and the next. The result is less of a single thread and more of a seasonal patchwork—stitched together like a scarecrow from discarded parts, or a carved pumpkin, jagged and uneven—animated with the unmistakable spirit of Halloween.
Along with Ferguson’s piece, the anthology includes five shorts: Coochie, Coochie Coo (Anna Zlokovic), Ut Supra Sic Infra (Paco Plaza), Fun Size (Casper Kelly), Kidprint (Alex Ross Perry), and Home Haunt (Micheline Pitt-Norman and R.H. Norman). The tales are uneven, consistent with the nature of anthologies. Still, the balance here leans heavily into the creepy, the disturbing, the upsetting, and, in a few cases, the flat-out horrifying.
V/H/S Halloween is delightfully nasty and cruel. It pushes the limits of what’s accepted as fair game. Sacred cows don’t stand a chance, and here even the calves are up for slaughter. V/H/S Halloween crosses lines that horror fans half expect will remain intact. The surprise comes not from taboos being broken, but in how gleefully they’re dismantled.
Do I have a favourite? Probably. But in an anthology where each short carries its own weight, choosing feels less like picking the best and more like splitting hairs between the grim and the grime. Still, if pressed, I’d admit that Coochie, Coochie Coo is the creepiest with an unnerving creature chirping the title phrase from behind a maze of dark doors and hallways.
But where Coochie, Coochie Coo put my nerves on edge, Kidprint downright unsettled, upset and horrified me in equal measure. But then there is Fun Sizewhich allows room for a bit of gruesome humour, the kind that had me chuckling through gitted teeth, and even Home Haunt sneaks in a perverse laughs amid its chaotic and brutal slaughter scene.
Granted, finding humour in scenes like these requires a willful surrender to the dark and the twisted, to deliberately lean into the grotesque, and permit yourself to be amused at what is otherwise disturbing or taboo. I have that ability, and whether that’s a badge of honour or reason for concern I leave for you to decide. But that, too, is part of the V/H/S legacy: an invitation to laugh nervously, uncomfortably, at what in any other context would be unspeakable.
Horror fans will likely be satisfied with this grab bag of shorts. V/H/S Halloweenstands as a high point in a franchise that has been as uneven as it has been enduring. This one is a dark ride into the macabre, loaded with haunting imagery, graphic violence, and bleak encounters. It’s also a reminder of what makes the format so perversely effective: stories that feel like they were never meant to be seen, stitched together in a way that denies comfort or closure.
Not every entry arrives with the same force. That’s the nature of the beast. But here even the weaker pieces manage to unsettle. The stronger ones do more than that—they disturb, they linger, they dare you to laugh at what you shouldn’t; and given that criteria, perhaps there are no weaker pieces.
Overall, this is an anthology that doesn’t play well with traditional Halloween tropes, it dismantles them, making it clear that, in this world, everything is fair game. It’s gruesome, it’s absurd, and it’s not to be taken seriously. But it will get under your skin. For a franchise that could have easily run its course by now, V/H/S Halloween still brims with life—and plenty of death.
V/H/S Halloween features directors Bryan M. Ferguson, Anna Zlokovic, Paco Plaza, Casper Kelly, Alex Ross Perry, and Micheline Pitt-Norman with R.H. Norman. V/H/S Halloween is currently available to stream on Shudder.