Directors: Alex Ross Perry, Paco Plaza, Anna Zlokovic, Bryan M. Ferguson, Micheline Pitt-Norman, R.H. Norman, Casper Kelly
Stars: Samantha Cochran, David Haydn, Carl William Garrison
Reviewing these movies has become a lot like watching them; something I do because, well, I did all the others so far. It’s October so, naturally, Shudder has rolled out another entry in the anthology series. On the one hand these are gifts to up and coming filmmakers looking to get their names out there and show what they’re about. On the other, V/H/S has long come to represent the kitschiest end of modern horror; a place to showcase your least serious ideas. The dark edge of those early instalments was recorded over long ago.
As we’ve come to expect, while the majority of the offerings showcase widely unknown talents, there’s a guest spot or two in the mix to draw the casually curious. This time around that space is occupied by Alex Ross Perry, veteran of the indie scene and responsible for the likes of Her Smell and recent slacker rock doc Pavements. But picking him out of the bunch isn’t as obvious as one might anticipate.
“Diet Phantasma”, courtesy of Bryan M. Ferguson, acts as our wraparound this year; a garishly rendered corporate research video that sees David Haydn’s smarmy Dr. Rothschild testing some particularly suspect new soft drinks on unsuspecting subjects. Heartening to see that with mere minutes on the clock V/H/S/Halloween already has the tentacles flying.
Things come into sharper focus for our first main entry, Anna Zlokovic’s 2009-set found footage segment “Coochie Coochie Coo” which follows young graduates Lacie (Samantha Cochran) and Kaleigh (Natalia Montgomery Fernandez) as they hotbox on Halloween before setting out on a trick-or-treat expedition around a witch’s neighbourhood. The pair are enjoyably obnoxious, capturing a brash intersection between youth and adulthood. The haunted house hijinks that ensue harken back to the Radio Silence entry that capped the very first V/H/S (a promising harbinger), one inflected with some discombobulated House of Leaves energy. Imagine the Blair Witch hosting a baby shower. It’s a segment overpacked with ideas, often sillier than it is scary, but you can’t fault Zlokovic’s ambition.
“Ut Supra Sic Infra” sees Paco Plaza take us south of the border for a deeply inadvisable police reconstruction of a Halloween night massacre. Sole survivor Enric (Teo Planell) walks a host of lawyers and forensic experts through the crime scene. We flit between this and recovered footage from the night in question for a somewhat disjointed piecing together of the evening’s grave encounters. There’s some nifty effects work involving gouged eyes and Scott Dereckson’s The Black Phone turns out to be an unexpected point of reference. At the very least, the titular Halloween theme seems to have been taken to heart by this year’s guest directors.
Casper Kelly presents “Fun Size” in which another set of college-age kids try their hand at trick-or-treating (at least it isn’t presented in the running order directly next to the superior “Coochie Coochie Coo”). With an aversion to corporate homogenisation, Austin (Jake Ellsworth) is enamoured by some cock-shaped candy, but greed leads the group to fall foul of *checks notes* a dimensional portal in a plastic bowl. Finding themselves in a candy factory that doubles as a kind of nightmarish escape room, the general hyperactivity and shrill performances make for a particularly gruelling endurance test. Not so much a sugar rush as an over-indulgence that leaves you feeling a little sick.
Alex Ross Perry’s 1992-set “Kidprint” at least presents us actual kids readying for their annual October festivities. Stephen Gurewitz is Tim Kaplan, whose small-town electronics outlet pre-empts Halloween night disappearances with a spurious service creating missing persons ads prior to potential abductions. It’s an insidious little idea in and of itself even before the segment descends into this year’s gnarliest offering. Separate from the sillier supernatural entities that surround it in the running order, Perry presents the ugliness of decidedly human degradation. He may spoil the mood of party-ready bonhomie, but there’s still a gloopy strain of dark humour to be found in his fucked-up presentation. “Kidprint” is still in-keeping with the latter-day sensibilities of V/H/S. That is to say it’s difficult to take seriously.
The last main segment is “Home Haunt” courtesy of R.H. Norman and Micheline Pitt-Norman, partners in crime who’s offering opens promisingly with some visual references that evoke fan-favourite franchise deviation Halloween III: Season of the Witch. Familial matters persist as Keith (Jeff Harms) takes his reluctant son Zack (Noah Diamond) to a local store in search of some festive props for their backyard ‘Dr. Mortis’ House of Horrors’. Keith pinches a novelty LP of cursed recordings and lo, merry hell is unleashed. Harms adds a streak of dorky dad humour to the narration that’s mostly amiable and the co-directors send us off with an effects bonanza that is – for better or worse – pure V/H/S.
Perhaps yearly is too frequent for this level of compacted hysteria. While V/H/S/Halloween doesn’t necessarily present a nadir for the series, this eighth installment – and fifth in five years – doesn’t do enough to collectively separate it from its brethren. These movies have become a largely interchangeable soup of effects-driven carnage, boasting plenty of ideas but rarely an atmosphere other than that of goofy abandon. The format itself is starting to feel flawed, not allowing the time for anything approaching depth or suspense to be established. Carnivals of excess that, ultimately, evoke nothing. The sense of diminishing returns feels pronounced even if the quality remains sorta the same. I guess there’s such a thing as too much candy.
So, a little more wearily, see you next year I guess.
The Lost Highway Hotel 