V/H/S Halloween (2025)
Directors & Writers: Bryan M. Ferguson (“Diet Phantasma”), Casper Kelly (“Fun Size”), R.H. Norman & Micheline Pitt (“Home Haunt), Alex Ross Perry (“Kidprint”), Paco Plaza (“Ut Supra Sic Infra” co-written with Alberto Marini), & Anna Zlokovic (“Coochie Coochie Coo”).
Starring David Haydn, Samantha Cochran, Natalia Montgomery Fernandez, Elena Musser, Adam Carr, Teo Planell, Lawson Greyson, Riley Nottingham, Jenna Hogan, Jake Ellsworth, Michael J. Sielaff, Carl Garrison, Stephen Gurewitz, Jeff Harms, Noah Diamond, Sarah Nicklin, & Rick Baker.

Horror

★★★★1/2 (out of ★★★★★)

DISCLAIMER:
The following essay contains
SPOILERS!
Turn back, lest ye be spoilt.

V/H/S/Halloween is one of the most fun, disturbing entries in the V/H/S franchise so far, delivering everything from a creepy kid snatcher to a terrible Gothic mommy to terrifying consumerism to a surreal trip into the making of a dastardly line of fun-size Halloween candies and more. The wraparound segment is a look behind the scenes of how a weird drink named Diet Phantasma came to market. The first segment involves a couple girls out on Halloween when they stumble into a real-life haunted house inhabited by a gross and horrifying family. The second segment tells the tale of a young man confessing to a crime he couldn’t possibly have committed by himself. The third segment is a warning: if the sign outside a house tells you only ONE PER PERSON, then you only take ONE candy, or else! The fourth segment is every parent’s worst nightmare, filled with gruesome discoveries at a local business. The fifth and final segment gives us a look at an eager dad’s haunt that goes wrong after he makes use of a soundtrack that unleashes evil.

V/H/S/Halloween does what some of the best entries in the franchise have done: it captures cultural moments and their potential horrors. While a few of the other recent excellent V/H/S films (V/H/S/94, V/H/S/99, V/H/S/85) have stuck to a particular year, allowing them to focus directly on the zeitgeist of those respective years, V/H/S/Halloween moves between a few definable years and times, still managing to portray clear cultural moments from various decades while also sticking to a lot of Halloween mainstays, such as the fact that Halloween has, for a long time, been a consumer capitalist event. As always, there are plenty of ooey, gooey, gory, nasty moments that’ll cling to the brain because you’re never too old for Halloween, especially when it’s V/H/S-style.
The V/H/S franchise routinely touches on different anxieties and fears of specific eras, and in V/H/S/Halloween there’s an appropriately horrific approach to a critique of consumer capitalism in several different segments. The wraparound segment, “Diet Phantasma,” deals with a Halloween III: Season of the Witch-like plot involving the Octagon Company, a corporation up to wicked things. Men, women, and children are all subject to nasty fates in the pursuit of the right poltergeist content per can of soda. Digging deeper, Diet Phantasma and its ghostly essence that possesses people can be read as an allegory about the effects of high-fructose corn syrup, particularly on young people; one little girl ends up possessed after Octagon’s able to get their poltergeist mixture juuust right.

In “Fun Size,” we watch as the body’s sliced up and turned into little bits and pieces of Halloween candy. The body’s not quite commodified here, though it’s consumed. Candied and packaged body parts end up as objects teaching a lesson to those who find themselves a little too greedy on Halloween night when they come across a generous house with a bowl outside full of candy including a sign that warns ONE PER PERSON.  “Kidprint” contains haunting consumer capitalism in the eponymous service offered by Kaplan Electronics. The Kidprint service is aimed at doing public good, yet it’s a company profiting off tragedy and the fear of paranoid parents in the wake of terrible crimes amongst their community. V/H/S/Halloween suggests the real horrors of Halloween aren’t the costumed ghouls in the streets, nor those working in haunts, rather they’re the capitalist demons pulling strings to continue commercialising Halloween, no matter the cost in flesh, blood, or sanity.
Although several of the segments in V/H/S/Halloween go for very big, imaginative horrors ideas—such as “Fun Size,” “Diet Phantasma,” “Ut Supra Sic Infra,” and “Home Haunt”—two segments go for deeply disturbing, somewhat realistic horrors. “Coochie Coochie Coo,” while going long into wild supernatural territory, sticks close to realism in the sense its recognisable backstory focuses on an abused pregnant woman who haunts a mysterious house. Two girls, dressed as creepy babies, wind up stuck in the house where they find foetuses and squirts of what turns out to be breast milk, among other gruesome discoveries. They eventually run into Mommy and discover some of her tortured life; horrific graffiti on a wall reads HE MADE ME MOMMY, not so subtly suggesting assault/forced pregnancy. Just as disturbing is “Kidprint” and its serial killer lurking in the most unexpected of places. This segments feels unsettlingly real while likewise playing on the paranoia of parents during Halloween. It doesn’t go for poisoned Pixy Stix, it works off the reality that many psychopathic killers have often been people in communities who seem ordinary and incapable of committing vicious crimes. The end of “Kidprint” is also partly reflective of real-life crimes since the actual culprit isn’t caught and will almost certainly go on doing heinous things.

You can watch V/H/S/Halloween simply for its chills and thrills, which don’t disappoint. You can also watch V/H/S/Halloween for its social commentary in between all its weird, wild, and gross imagery, too. I’ve always loved Halloween since I was a child; however, it’s hard as an adult to pretend it isn’t merely a celebration built more and more on consumer capitalism with each passing year. Even this site itself during October attempts to gear towards the season so that more traffic pours in and more clicks turn into cents that accumulate into dollars. There’s a sinister presence during Halloween that lurks in the greedy hearts of (over-)consumers and capitalists alike. It disregards happiness, health, and safety—a foul, demonic entity that rots society out from its core, like a tooth eaten away by a cavity created from munching on too much sweet, delicious candy corn. V/H/S/Halloween is a fun seasonal ride, and it’s just as much a reminder that even one of the most fun days of the year cannot remain untouched by the malevolent forces of capitalism.