Review: V/H/S HALLOWEEN

 by Patrick Bromley

If it's October, it must be V/H/S.

The V/H/S franchise has had a fascinating journey. What began as an interesting experiment in mumblecore horror has now, almost a decade and a half later, become an annual institution for the horror streamer Shudder -- sometimes an opportunity for would-be horror filmmakers to show their stuff and maybe get a foot in the door, other times an excuse for more established genre directors with a case of the fuckarounds to make something quickly and cheaply that's going to be seen by a lot of people. The franchise remains fairly niche -- outside of hardcore horror fans and Shudder subscribers, I'm not sure there's a huge audience for V/H/S movies -- but the fact that they've become something of a tradition at this point means that a lot of us scary movie lovers will still breathlessly await each new entry every year despite the fact that we probably should have learned our lesson.

I say "learned our lesson" because something unfortunate has happened to V/H/S on its way to becoming an annual ??? (this year's V/H/S Halloween is now the eighth installment in the series): it has become strangely ephemeral. If you were to ask me about a segment from any of the first three (theatrically release) entries -- yes, even V/H/S Viral -- I could pretty easily recall which segment appeared in which anthology and even which indie horror director was responsible. As the franchise has flooded its own market, though, its impact has become diminished to where it has the permanence not of a feature film but of episodic television. I can no longer remember whether or not a segment appeared in V/H/S 94 or V/H/S 85 or V/H/S Beyond. A horror franchise flooding its own market isn't anything new -- slasher series have a habit of running 10 movies or more -- but those have plots (or "plots") and characters we can grab onto and at least recall if that's the one where Roy is the killer or if that's the one set in space. Because of the nature of the anthology format, V/H/S doesn't have the same advantage. It's a Halloween treat every year, sure, but I can barely remember it more than a fun size Snickers I ate two years ago.

The great irony to all of this is that I more or less enjoy every V/H/S installment to one degree or another, and V/H/S Halloween is no different. Featuring a roster of several up and comers and a few veterans and themed (mostly) to Halloween night, this new anthology is another installment in the series for both better and worse. It still uses all the tropes of found footage films -- admittedly not my favorite style of filmmaking, making me the problem here -- meaning there's a few minutes of setup before people start screaming "What the fuck was that?" and the camera starts shaking and everyone runs and we sort of maybe glimpse something upsetting. Some of  the shorts handle this better than others. And while not all of the segments hit, as with any anthology there's a new opportunity to win me back every few minutes. The hit ratio is a little higher this time around.

We begin with a framing device, "Diet Phantasma Trials," from Bryan Ferguson, a music video director whose first feature Dysphoria is due later this year. It features a bunch of test subjects trying out a new soft drink with varying horrible results. The first proper segment is Anna Zlokovic's "Coochie Coochie Coo," in which a pair of women find themselves trapped in a house on Halloween night and encounter  The Mommy, thought to be an urban legend. I'm not sure if Zlokovic (whose credits include the pretty good movie Appendage, streaming on Hulu) embraces so many found footage clichés because she wants her segment to be self-aware or if they're just something she's falling back on, but eventually it stops mattering because she manages to conjure up some seriously creepy imagery that sticks in the brain the way many of the best V/H/S segments do. That's followed by "Ut Supra Sic Infra" by Spanish filmmaker Paco Plaze, for which I had high hopes because he wrote and co-directed REC, one of the best found-footage horror movies ever made. His segment (co-written with Alberto Marini) involves the police interrogation of the only survivor of some horrible murders, cutting back and forth between their official footage and the recording of what actually happened. The setup works, but it doesn't build enough of a finale to really justify what precedes it, ending on a whimper instead of a bloody bang.

Longtime Adult Swim contributor and "Too Many Cooks" creator Casper Kelly is up next with "Fun Size," in which four teenagers disrespect the rules of the "Honor Bowl" while trick-or-treating and get their comeuppance. While the premise might sound a lot like the Adam Green Halloween short "Just Take One," Kelly has cooked up (see what I did) something entirely different: Kelly, not surprisingly given his resume, takes the short into nasty, insane, and pretty surreal places. One of the most effective segments belongs to indie stalwart Alex Ross Perry, a filmmaker I really like but who hasn't yet dabbled in horror (though I know from his podcast appearances that he's a huge lover of the genre). His "Kidprint" is set on Halloween night 1992 and centers around a video company that records kids to help with law enforcement in the case of an abduction. It's much more dark and ugly than the other shorts -- it would have been more at home in the original V/H/S -- but it's put together very well and exploits some very real fears many have felt on Halloween: that bad people might do bad things to people we love. 

The final segment is the best of the film and pretty much an all-timer: "Home Haunt," written and directed by the team of Micheline Pitt-Norman and R.H. Norman. It features a family running a homemade haunted house that goes in unexpected directions when the father plays a cursed record he stole from an antique shop. It's a great closer to the anthology because the scope is fairly epic and there is some incredible effects work executed like magic tricks (plus the movie's funniest and most well-cast supporting performance, though I won't spoil the surprise as to who it is). It has the most Halloween atmosphere of any of the segments and goes to some crazy places without sacrificing a playful sense of fun.

I honestly don't know where I'd rank V/H/S Halloween within the V/H/S franchise. There's not a "Safe Haven" from V/H/S 2 or even a "Storm Drain" from V/H/S 94 (Hail Raatma) in sight, but nearly all of the segments are good -- a rarity not only for this series, but for any anthology --  and the Halloween hook gives the movie a replay value that some of the previous installments lack. This could easily become a yearly holiday staple. The V/H/S series has become something very different than what it was when it started, and that's ok; all franchises have to evolve if they're going to continue as long as this one has. I can't predict that all the shorts in Halloween won't be as ephemeral as so many of the other entries (I know at least "Home Haunt" and "Kidprint" will stick with me, albeit for very different reasons) but it's a pretty fun watch this season. When you get to number eight, being one of the better entries is a status hard earned and well deserved.

V/H/S Halloween is streaming on Shudder today, October 3rd.