V/H/S/Halloween - User Reviews
It's gory, and becomes so !@#$ing boring that I skipped through at least a third of it. The final entry, "Dr. Mortis" was probably the best. The rest of it is stupid people doing stupid !@#$. Now I remember why I stopped watching "V/H/S". Horror is a genre chock-full of way too much crap.
Great time all around. The only one that struck out was Coochie Coochie Coo which felt very basic and like it expects no one has ever heard of the conceit and would be terrified of it without more put into it. But Diet Phantasma is an entertaining wraparound that commits to its campy concept with a just as campy antagonist devoted to the science and nothing else. Ut Supra Sic Infra is a simple concept done by a director experienced in found footage and horror, and that experience leads to great and gnarly practical effects and creative camera angles. It’s a short and sweet slow build to a great crescendo. Fun Size has Kelley’s usual comedic horror Adult Swim style that is especially fun to watch in a group setting, lots of laughs and some great designs and personalities for the villains. Kidprint is a jarring departure from the rest that shows just enough while never feeling like it’s holding back, and the performance of its villain is chilling. And Home Haunt is a great idea of a DIY haunted house come to deadly life, 80s camp with wild gore and kills. These make up for CCC enough to make this one of the best entries yet.
TL;DR: This isn't my favorite movie. Slight overreaction: The existence of this "film" would make more sense as a failed social experiment in which a group of sadistic a^^holes attempted to make the least viable product with minimal effort, execute it poorly and see if they could still make money. That this is an entry in a long running and presumably financially successful series makes it worse. This anthology movie, which has a horrible "wraparound" that has nothing to do with the rest of the film, doesn't even deign to finish the terrible framing device. Only two of the short stories reflect a cracked, dirty and distorted fun house mirror image of a pale ghost featuring a semblance of worth. Those being the "Italian seance" and "haunted house" segments. However, even these shorts are bad. The seance segment is the sole story that seemed professionally made. This movie is a disgrace. That typed, the joke - or trick, if you will (or won't) - is on me for having watched this dumpster fire as it illuminated a junk yard filled with lost time. While the film seems to open with the worst short (an interesting choice), it's almost impressive to note that a worse short follows later in the collection. Even when a hint of an interesting idea crops up, it's executed by poor execution. To add insult to injury, despite being short films, they all feel padded. Large portions of this movie literally seem like an unprepared and untalented moron was handed a video camera and made up something (terrible) on the spot, which remained in the film (such as large portions of the "kids ID" segment). It's not ironic or so bad it's good... it's terrible. This is a bad film. I almost feel sorry for those with a modicum of talent who are now associated with it. Those responsible for this movie should suffer the fate of the d^mned souls featured in it... or worse yet, those who watched it. The guilty parties should be forced to watch this film and those like it for all eternity. If you like this movie, I don't want to know you.
The V/H/S franchise of films are often fun, often in bad taste but typically don't cross the line into ugly and distasteful, until now. The latest iteration to my mind, goes too far depicting a actions of a child serial killer, in a manner that I found troubling and deeply off putting. Or put another way downright ugly. In summary, if this is the direction V/H/S want to go in, Ill be staying away in future. A hard pass from me.
V/H/S/Halloween feels like a love letter to everything that makes October special, the haunted mazes, the trick-or-treat chaos, and the unease that lurks behind every smiling pumpkin. The connecting story, Diet Phantasma, follows a soda taste-test that goes violently wrong, stitching together each short with bursts of gore and black humour. The first story hits like a nightmare. People turning into babies sounds absurd until you see it play out. It’s grotesque, deeply uncomfortable, and somehow still oddly tragic, a twisted spin on innocence gone rotten. The second tale burns slow but pays off in filth and shock. It’s a reminder that this series still knows how to make your stomach turn. Then comes the sugar-soaked madness. The third story, all about sweets and chocolate, is a delirious satire of Halloween’s commercial side, a garish, gory rampage that captures the chaos of the holiday devouring itself. The fourth, Kidprint, is easily the darkest. It crawls under your skin with its portrait of parents filming their kids to feel safe. It’s about fear, control, and the anxiety of letting go, and it leaves a chill that no jump scare could. Things close with The Great American Backyard Haunt, a blood-splattered nod to neighbourhood attractions where the homemade decorations actually come alive. It’s brisk, brutal, and packed with energy, the perfect way to end the carnage. V/H/S/Halloween doesn’t just deliver gore, it captures the whole Halloween experience, the fun, the fear, and the fragile sense of safety that comes with the night. It’s inconsistent, yes, but when it hits, it’s both nostalgic and nasty in equal measure. If you liked V/H/S/94, Trick ’r Treat, or Tales of Halloween, this one deserves a spot in your yearly ritual.