V/H/S Halloween

A delirious Trick-or-Treat of blood, candy, and cursed VHS tapes.

Every year, the V/H/S saga sneaks up on us with a new anthology—a true seasonal blessing for horror devotees.

This year’s entry couldn’t be more fittingly titled: “V/H/S: Halloween.” A love letter to every horror lover’s favourite festivity, this instalment binds six chaotic segments together with the premise of a clinical trial for a mysterious new fizzy drink named Diet Phantasma.

Each short follows a group of thrill-seeking youngsters on Halloween night, turning the good old Trick or Treat into a blood-soaked carousel of deranged torture, blood chaos, and gleeful mayhem—more playful than scary, but no less entertaining.

Most of the stories orbit classic Halloween motifs—urban legends, heaping bowls of sweets, and haunted houses—sharing a unified tone: tongue-in-bloody-cheek humour and a gleeful disregard for good taste.

The anthology kicks off properly with Anna Zlokovic’s “Coochie Coochie Coo”, centred on two teens far too old for trick-or-treating but desperate for one last sugar rush. Following a local legend, they inevitably wander into the wrong house. It’s the ideal opener—a perfectly twisted gateway into this latest V/H/S monument, carrying a faint “Barbarian” vibe.

After a brief return to our Diet Phantasma experiment, we plunge into Paco Plaza’s “Ut Supra Sic Infra”—one that deserves attention. A survivor was taken back on a massacre scene where his friends were brutally murdered, leaving the victims with some facial marks add a layer of occult mystery, delivering proper chills amid the chaos.

Then comes my personal favourite, “Fun Size” by Casper Kelly. A group of average partygoers stumble upon one of those unattended porch bowls labelled—Take One. Naturally, they don’t. The first sweet is suspiciously moreish, and soon they’re whisked into a grotesque, candy-coated sweets factory with atmospheric dread for absurd, and hyper-saturated comedy—and it works perfectly.

Alex Ross Perry’s “Kidprint” is the anthology’s most brutal short—a grimy, lo-fi descent into depravity. It follows a man running a photo shop that films children just in case they go missing. It’s nasty, violent, and gory—yet its darkness feels somewhat surface-level. It does its job, but not a memorable haunting.

The closing chapter, “Home Haunt,” directed by Micheline Pitt-Norman and R.H. Norman, is a suburban tale about a dad’s obsession with building the scariest home haunt, as obviously it spirals out of control after he discovers a cursed vinyl that summons something otherworldly when played. It’s a frenetic, gore-slick finale—not the anthology’s best, but a satisfying, blood-soaked curtain fall.

Overall, “V/H/S: Halloween” doesn’t reinvent the franchise, but it doesn’t need to. a riotous blend of comedy and haunting chaos that balances its humour, horror, and gore effortlessly—making it a perfect October treat.

If the next V/H/S turns up wrapped in Christmas tinsel, Easter pastels, or Fourth of July fireworks, count me in. The seed’s been planted—and I’m ready for another twisted harvest.