Anyone who’s been following this blog for more than a year or so will know how much I appreciate Shudder’s now-annual V/H/S releases: 99 was a good one, 85 was OK, Beyond was the best of the bunch, and now we get the series’ first one with a proper organising theme to its entries. Beyond theoretically had a sci-fi/alien theme, but it didn’t apply to all of its segments and wasn’t even something unique to that entry in the franchise. Here, we get five shorts and one wraparound narrative all taking place on the best night of the year, October 31st, in different eras.
Past V/H/Ses have featured major genre names such as Adam Wingard (You’re Next, Blair Witch, Godzilla vs. Kong), Scott Derickson (Sinister, Doctor Strange, The Black Phone) and Ti West (The House of the Devil, The Innkeepers, X/Pearl/MaXXXine), but the directors of the various shorts here are almost all complete unknowns; in some cases, directors without a feature under their belt. There’s also no framing tale as such, as there has usually – but not always – been in the series. Bryan M. Ferguson’s “Diet Phantasma” acts as a wraparound in the sense that it’s broken up into little bits which are scattered around the other complete shorts, but it doesn’t tie in to or introduce those shorts. “Diet Phantasma” is a fun though lightweight piece from a director best-known for his boundary-pushing music videos, presenting the ethically-questionable consumer trials of a new soda, or “fizzy juice” in Ferguson’s native Scotland, with a pleasingly 80s aesthetic, right down to the lead scientist’s not-so-coincidental resemblance to John Landis.
The first full short, “Coochie Coochie Coo”, comes from Anna Zlokovic, whose lone feature is 2023’s Appendage. “Coochie Coochie Coo” takes a couple of teenage trick-or-treaters into a house of twisted nightmares with a babies/motherhood theme and some fantastically horrible practical effects, though it doesn’t come close to “Stork” from V/H/S/Beyond, which is the past segment it most resembles.
“Ut Supra Sic Infra” (“As Above, So Below”, but that name is already taken by a somewhat-disappointing 2014 found-footage horror) is the series’ now-traditional non-English entry, coming from Spain’s Paco Plaza, co-director of [REC], perhaps the most experienced name contributing to this entry, whose piece delivers a few neat effects – some practical, some CG – in want of some more compelling ideas, in a haunted-house/possession-type story with some loopy physics.
The standout piece here, “Fun Size”, begins similarly to “Coochie Coochie Coo”, with some trick-or-treaters who are surely too old for this lark by now. However, with this piece coming from Casper Kelly of Mandy and, more importantly, [adult swim]’s “Too Many Cooks”, things take a turn for the downright surreal once our protagonists encounter a cursed candy bowl containing the kind of sweets and chocolates an AI might generate, with names like “& and &s” and “Larry Find”. Don’t take more than one each, the bowl warns them, but of course they’re unable to listen and they soon find themselves inside one of the weirdest and most blackly comic nightmares this series has to offer. Kelly has been joking about this piece being a dry run for a feature, but here’s hoping that’s not a joke after all. It’s easily one of the best segments in any V/H/S.
Sadly, the energy isn’t really kept up in the last two shorts, Alex Ross Perry’s “Kidprint” and “Home Haunt” from R. H. Norman and Micheline Pitt-Norman. The first is a serial-killer/abduction-themed piece with a serious tone and an almost torture-porn-level violence quotient, calling to mind the shrillest of 1990s “Stranger Danger” warnings; “Home Haunt” goes the opposite direction with a tribute to the cheese and goof of the bygone splatter films of yesteryear. It must have been a lot of fun to make, I’ve no doubt, but by this point in a fairly long (115m) and uneven film, it doesn’t offer enough that’s new to justify itself.
Overall, nothing from this entry save for “Fun Size” is likely to stick with you long after the credits have rolled, making this one of the weaker entries in a generally-reliable series. Speaking of credits rolling, be sure to stick around for a little bonus tag during the credits, as well as a killer tune: “grimace_smoking_weed” by Chat Pile.
★★★☆☆