By Can you believe that there are eight V/H/S movies? Since the franchise debuted in 2012, the V/H/S series has become somewhat of a staple around the Halloween season, offering up a new assortment of scary short films. Some are hits, some are misses, but for the most part, I’m never disappointed in them, especially because since 2021 they’ve become a yearly release for Shudder. They’ve served as the proving grounds for plenty of interesting horror directors, and V/H/S/Halloween is no exception.
It seems like common sense that, after seven installments, the producers would finally create an entry in the series that’s almost entirely centered around Halloween. After all, most entries have released in or around October, so why not have one that’s just riddled with Halloween imagery and iconography? As always, the results are mixed, but I would argue that the highs of V/H/S/Halloween stand as some of the series’ best.
V/H/S/Halloween
Directors: Bryan Ferguson (Diet Phantasma), Anna Zlokovic (Coochie Coochie Coo), Paco Plaza (Ut Supra Sic Infra), Casper Kelly (Fun Size), Alex Ross Perry (Kidprint), Micheline Pitt-Norman & R.H. Norman (Home Haunt)
Release Date: October 3, 2025 (Shudder)
Rating: R
Like most other V/H/S entries, judging V/H/S/Halloween is tricky given the anthological nature of each installment. Some segments work, some don’t, and each entry usually lives or dies by its highs and lows. I can say that on the whole, I think having the theming of each segment set around Halloween works, since it gives a unique feel to the movie. There’s a difference between a traditional horror movie and a horror movie about Halloween, and I think that V/H/S/Halloween understands and meshes those two together well. It’s not quite as delicious as Trick ‘r Treat, but then again, what is?
So, much like last year for V/H/S Beyond, I’m going to give an individual review for each of the shorts, assign them a score, and the final review score will be the average of them all. There are five main segments, including a wrap-around segment, so let’s just dive right in with the first segment.
Diet Phantasma: There’s a certain dark humor to Diet Phantasma that I love. As far as a wrap-around segment goes, centering each snippet on archival footage of a company trying to make a drink fueled with ectoplasm is pretty damn fun. Seeing the COO nonchalantly watch as ghosts gruesomely murder test subjects is comic gold. A kid may be exploding in front of his eyes, but seeing him smoke a cigarette and groan about how they need another test subject is a simple but hilarious critique of capitalism. There’s not much else going on here, but there doesn’t need to be. It’s a funny segment with the right amount of gore. 8/10
Copyright: Shudder
Coochie Coochie Coo: Coochie Coochie Coo is a very standard V/H/S entry. We see two high school, soon-to-be college-age, girls as they go trick-or-treating, they wind up in a scary place with a frightening monster, and the whole segment is just watching them escape. The short lives and dies by its monster, and for what it’s worth, the monster, Mommy, is pretty darn creepy. But the short isn’t just the big monster, and the little creatures she has alongside her start out creepy but quickly become funny, and not in a good way. The thrills are pretty solid, but the longer we stay in her house, the less terrifying it is. It’s still unsettling, but compared to other shorts that do the same concept, it’s just okay. 6/10
Ut Supra Sic Infra: I was fairly curious about Ut Supra Sic Infra solely because of Paco Plaza’s involvement. As the creator of the REC franchise, there was a lot of potential for intense thrills with a more guerrilla approach. I can’t say I was expecting a police procedural, but for the most part, it works. We follow the police as they investigate how a group of people were murdered, while we frequently cut back to the victims leading up to the grizzly events. It’s a lot of build-up, and while the build-up is merely okay, the end result is pretty great, with a great climax and a wonderful final shot. It’s not amazing by any means, but it’s still a fun ride while it lasts. 6.5/10
Fun Size: Putting Casper Kelly, the guy who made Too Many Cooks and Yule Log for Adult Swim, into the mix should deliver a chaotic and memorable horror experience. The reality is more mixed. There’s a goofier charm to Fun Size that feels akin to an Adult Swim short that’s allowed to fully cut loose, but the actual scares are few and far between. It focuses a lot on shock and gross-out humor, but even then, the gross-out humor is tepid at best. Its villain is this cartoonish mascot that’s a bit too generic to be memorable, and the characters don’t really feel well-formed. In fact, one character is referred to most of the time as “the fiancée” to the point where I don’t even know her actual name. There’s the germ of a good idea here, but it’s not well executed. 5/10
Copyright: Shudder
Kidprint: Jesus… this short is something else. It’s a serial killer thriller that’s just bleak. Of course, any short centering on a mass murderer who kills kids is going to be dark, but it’s so much more than that. There’s a hopeless vibe to it with some disturbing imagery that would feel more at home in The Silence of the Lambs, and it’s amazing. The setup is well done, the unease that you can feel in this small town is palpable, and when Kidprint decides to go full mask off, it sticks with you. It’s not only the best short in V/H/S/Halloween, I would argue it’s one of the best shorts that the franchise has ever produced. It’s by far the most disturbing short of the bunch, but it leaves you with such a sickening feeling at the end that I can’t stop thinking about it. 10/10
Home Haunt: While Coochie Coochie Coo left me kind of cold as far as a haunted house installment goes, Home Haunt filled that void spectacularly. It’s probably the most Halloween-centered short here, since it’s set inside a haunted house where the attractions come to life. It’s probably the most fun of the shorts too, especially since most of the kills are gruesome in the same way an over-the-top slasher is. It’s the one short I can also see becoming a full feature film, since a lot of the drama revolves around the family that runs the haunted house and the strained relationship between the father and son. It’s thrilling in the ways a good haunted house is, and frankly, that’s good enough for me. 7/10
On the whole, the batting average of V/H/S/Halloween is pretty high. Its low points aren’t terrible by any definition of the word, and the high points are some of the best short-form horror I’ve seen in a long time. The decision to center the film on and around Halloween was a simple choice, but it led to a strong thematic through-line that made most of the shorts fun. I hope that future V/H/S movies continue to have these strong unifying characteristics, because if this keeps up, then I’ll happily review each new entry in the series for as long as they keep making them.
