3 out of 5

Directed by: Bryan M. Ferguson, Casper Kelly, Micheline Pitt-Norman and R.H. Norman, Alex Ross Perry, Paco Plaza, Anna Zlokovic

We are… eight entries deep in the V/H/S/ franchise at this point, and although the series has wavered back and forth between trying to actually use a framing device to link its entries versus just kind of theme-ing them together, “Halloween” – despite being perhaps one of the more obvious horror anthology themes besides Christmas – is the first of these to really just feel like it could belong to any ol’ franchise. And maybe it’s exactly because of that most generic (though favored) of focuses; but I could feel it in the spirit of the production from the start: wraparound ‘Diet Phantasma,’ though pretty funny conceptually, is structurally a copy-and-paste of wraparounds we’ve seen before. It’s final post-credits payoff works, but every blip before then doesn’t work as an ante-up of its concept of demon-possessed soda: rather, once the bona fides of its goofy and goopy practical effects are employed, we’re just rinsing and repeating. I kept waiting for some shoe to drop, but it’s the same shoe over and again.

The same can be said for one of the more controversial entries: Alex Ross Perry’s Kidprint, with which I didn’t take much issue with its content (and I’ll raise my hands as one of those horror fans who nods approvingly when films try to push the no-kids / no-animals barriers, if done with intent), but I did find myself incredibly bored by it: Perry does the ol’ trope of the VHS we’re watching flashing a spliced in few frames of what’s to come, and from that splash I was just kind of like – okay, so we’re going in the most obvious direction here. Fine, because surely that means there will be some other shoe dropping, but no: same shoe. There’s something to be said about just kind of barreling ahead in that sense, and maybe subverting tropes by not doing a twist, but even without knowing Perry helmed this entry while watching (as I have feelings about his works), I didn’t get the feeling that the filmmaker was doing any subversion, or least not in an especially compelling way. The gore was uncomfortable, which is another one of those weird horror things for which I’ll give props, I guess I just wish this amounted to more overall.

This mostly summarizes my feelings on ‘Halloween’ and, unfortunately, a lot of found footage at this point: it’s a thriving genre still, and one I’ve always been drawn towards, but man is it hard to really nail it and do something that feels new or wholly effective. So most of it – and most of Halloween – gives me that “I wish this amounted to more” vibe.

With that trashing done, I’ve named the two entries that made me restless (because these effing things have bloated to two hours); the rest of the entries – if mostly uneven – were all entertaining, with, for me, one clear standout.

In order: Anna Zlokovic’s ‘Coochie Coochie Coo’ is our gross out entry, but man this was a targeted employment of that, where the gross out felt intrinsic to the story’s intentions and the way it was plotted, and Zlokovic does a great job of creeping toward the grossness. This also felt the most “real” in terms of characters: the high schoolers who are going in for one last Trick or Treat before pending adult(-ish)hood enter what they think is a haunted house of sorts, but which ends up mapping to local lore of a figure called “The Mommy,” – these two girls (Samantha Cochran, Natalia Montgomery Fernandez) came across as pretty legit to me, inclusive of their reactions to things happening in the house.

Genre grandmaster Paco Plaza offers up ‘Ut Supra Sic Infra,’ which was more appealing from a technical approach than maybe directly engaging. That sounds like a sleight, but that’s a totally acceptable way to break the malaise of found footage, and Plaza accomplishes that. In ‘Ut Supra,’ we follow a filmed walkthrough of a multiple murder crime scene, where one of the participants is asked to replicate what happened exactly, and… he does. Bearing in mind the first instance ended in a lot of death. Plaza cuts back and forth to (camera-filmed) footage of the original scene somewhat unnecessarily, but it’s a good way of faking us out into a sense of safety during the original scene’s nighttime, loose footage and the daytime, more structured stuff.

‘Too Many Cooks‘ Casper Kelly offers up the funny and annoying ‘Fun Size,’ which I guess that emotional range is apropos. But where ‘Cooks’ really just kept taking you down its already unexpected alley in a continually challenging fashion, Kelly’s gag with ‘Fun Size’ is to just stare the genre in the face: he has one of his characters essentially just called “fiancé” throughout – she has a name, but it’s rarely said – and its also-too-old Trick or Treaters (a la Coochie Coochie Coo) dress up as found footage filmers, har dee har, and everyone is clearly directed to overact, with the gore gags geared towards Hercshell Gordon Lewis style B-movie overkill. It’s not not funny, and definitely keeps you watching out of curiosity, but the joke lands slightly left of center, again begging “is there something more to this?” vibes.

Finally, Home Haunt from Micheline Pitt-Norman and R.H. Norman takes the crown: calling back the great Radio Silence entry from V/H/S/ – though also admittedly mimicking the this-isn’t-a-haunted-house vibes from Coochie – a father and son’s (Jeff Harms, Noah Dimaond) yearly Halloween escapade of constructing an elaborate spook house for their neighborhood has clearly grown to be a tired activity for (as we flash forward through VHS clips) the now grown son. So, inevitably, dad pledges to make this year’s outing the best ever, and procures an item for the house which he’s sure is gonna seal the deal. It seals a deal, and as the door to the house closes behind the participants, it quickly becomes clear that the props are a lil’ more dangerous this year. The setup is a tad plodding (see the 2-hour runtime…), but once things are in motion, this is a top tier entry, running through some great gore gags and effective uses of the camera.

…But overall, you can see how even within this entry in the series – I mentioned comparisons to Coochie a couple times it starts to recycle itself, and I found myself very tuned out of the found footage aspect in the sense that there was barely an attempt to make it feel organic. Plaza’s entry, for example, is shot initially like something from the 80s, but then you see the date in the corner of the video is from 2017. That era appropriation is something that occurs throughout Halloween (which should seem especially weird from an originator like Plaza), and I feel is responsible for it coming across as any-ol’-anthology overall: a lot of found footage nowadays is shot by folks who only experienced the era(s) it nods to via its format second hand. I don’t necessarily need to unpack that here (I have on some other FF reviews), but it’s interesting to feel it fully seeping into V/H/S/, which did, initially, feel like a resurgence of the genre at the tail end of a generation which did experience VHS directly.