Fantastic Fest 2025 Review: V/H/S/HALLOWEEN is a Hauntingly Good Time!

It's that time again!!! Another Fantastic Fest, another premiere of a new V/H/S movie! Getting to see the latest release of this long-running series has become one of my favorite parts of the festival. I'm a fan of both found footage and anthology films, and the V/H/S series always spotlights an amazing group of filmmakers. This year, the theme spotlights the greatest of all holidays: Halloween. Six segments focusing on tricks, treats, and things that go bump in the night.

Coochie Coochie Coo

The film opens with a fun story from filmmaker Anna Zlokovik. A pair of friends on the precipice of adulthood decide to embrace the inner child and go trick-or-treating one last time. They both don some onesies and some masks and go out to get all the candy their teenage hearts desire.  Until they knock on the wrong door. You see, their town has a legend of a monster (Mommy) who kidnaps greedy children, and this Halloween, they just might meet her.

Zlokovik employs a lot of fantastic makeup effects to pull this one off, especially when Mommy finally appears. We see a lot of weird stuff building up to the big reveal, but it’s nothing compared to the impact of finally seeing the monster onscreen. It’s hard to go wrong with a gnarly creature feather like this one.

Ut Supra Sic Infra

Paco Plaza is no stranger to the genre, having co-directed found footage giants REC and REC2. Here, he tells the story of a group of twenty-somethings who break into an abandoned space for a Halloween party, only to completely disappear after. One remaining survivor is taken by police back to the site of the party to recreate the events of the evening. Their hope is that by going through everything together and documenting it, they may be able to figure out exactly what happened. The key is some Latin words written on the wall. Because as we all know, when mysterious Latin words appear, it is very important to read them aloud and see what happens.

Plaza does a great job of setting the mood up front with this one, and then lets the suspense build as the story progresses. The idea of using the police reconstruction footage as a framework for the story is solid. He then intercuts it with footage from the party itself, which further amps the suspense as we see what initially happened to the missing revelers and know that the police are about to unleash the same evil.

Fun Size

Casper Kelly (Too Many Cooks, Adult Swim Yule Log) is a madman. And I mean that as a compliment. This was one of my favorite segments because (unsurprisingly) it was completely unhinged. When a group of adults leave a Halloween party in favor of some last-minute trick-or-treating, they get way, way more than they bargained for. They encounter a big bucket of candy on the porch of a normal-looking home. The candy in the bowl is strange - none of the classics and nothing that they have ever seen before. They immediately break the “Just Take One” rule and are sucked inside of the bowl and into another dimension where craziness ensues. 

This segment carries the vibe of having devoured too much candy and running around the house on a sugar high. It’s gory, bonkers, and every moment is unexpected. A ton of fun from start to finish and some of the most unexpected surprises you can imagine.

Kidprint

From Alex Ross Perry comes a grounded story about the real dangers of strangers in a small community. In response to several kidnappings over the past few years, Halloween festivities have been all but cancelled and a local print shop has begun to offer the “Kidprint” service to parents. This service provides them with video footage and important stats about their children, recorded and packaged into information that could be helpful to authorities in a missing person search. As much as this community has tried to shield itself from the wave of kidnappings, it seems that the villain has at least one more planned for this Halloween season. 

This will likely be the most divisive segment of the film; the gore and practical effects make it a really gruesome segment, but the fact that it is so rooted in reality might make it come off as a bit mean-spirited. 

Home Haunt

Micheline Pitt and R.H. Norman are the directors behind another high point in the film. Home Haunt tells the story of a family who have regularly put up a Halloween attraction for their friends and neighbors. As the time rolls around for them to start work on it, their teenage son is less than enthusiastic. The father, not wanting to lose the one thing that has brought them together all these years, is determined to keep the tradition going. They move forward, constructing the new haunt and getting everything ready, but when they acquire and start playing a cursed record, their haunt comes to life and brings real horrors to their small neighborhood. 

This segment felt the most “Halloween” of the bunch, really capturing the vibe of the holiday and the enthusiasm of the people who look forward to this day beyond all others. It’s high energy and really revels in everything that makes this holiday fun. 

Diet Phantasma

Diet Phantasma is the segment that serves as the wrap-around. Directed by Brian M. Fergueson, the short is made up of footage from some top-secret product testing being performed by a soda company. They have a new product - the titular Diet Phantasma - that they hope to release for the upcoming Halloween season. But they’re having a hard time dialing in the recipe. The test subjects are having alarming adverse reactions to the product (with very messy and hilarious results). As their deadline nears and their corporate overlords are breathing down their necks, the team works to refine the product to inflict minimal damage to the public.

This segment is perfectly paced as a wrap-around. At each break, we check back in with the scientists to see a new test subject try the special brew and see the aftermath. It’s a little bite-sized bit of insanity before we roll into the next segment, and when we finally get to see the end, it’s one that was absolutely worth waiting for.

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V/H/S/Halloween is another win for the series. There are lots of strong segments and ideas in this one and everyone is sure to have their favorite. It’s always fun to see the creativity at play with this series, and having that creativity applied to the best holiday in the world is even better. Tricks and treats for all!

Movie Score: 5/5