V/H/S Halloween – Blu-ray Review
The V/H/S series has long been a mad, wildly divergent portmanteau of short films under a shaky-cam banner. The eighth chapter – yes you read that right there’s been eight of these crazy rides, I know, right? – V/H/S Halloween, arrives on Blu-ray with this February from Acorn Media International.
Physical media is where it’s at and this single-disc Blu-ray gets the basics right: a standard 1080p HD transfer in 16:9 widescreen and a DTS-HD 5.1 audio track that gives us everything we want from the gurgles, squelches and screams and fills our eyeballs with the gruesome goodness with rich colours and solid shadows.
It doesn’t dazzle with high-end polish – the found-footage aesthetic intentionally leans into grit and grain and of course “trackin’s touchy” levels of VHS visual glitches – but the transfer feels appropriately raw without being muddy. Occasional muffled ambience and the deliberately shaky visual style can test your patience, but that’s part of the V/H/S DNA, not a fault of the disc itself.
If you’re after your Halloween terror clean and pristine, this won’t be a demo disc; if you want the lates V/H/S instalment on physical media with its intended look and feel, this Blu-ray ticks that box.
Diet Phantasma connects the dots loosely as we go through the film, with each segment documenting a group of taste trial participants who face life-threatening side effects from a new kind of drink, Diet Phantasma. I’m assuming they had to drop Diet Phanta for legal reasons 😀 Plenty of practical gore and make up effects make this UK shot film work better than it should.
First of the segments is then Coochie Coochie Coo, written and directed by Anna Zlokovic – this tale of two high school trick or treaters, dressed as babies who come face to face with an urban legend who supposedly kidnaps children from their homes on the spookiest night of the year. This one’s genuinely creepy with phenomenal practical make up effects, but plays a little long for me.
Next up is Paco Plaza’s “Ut Supra Sic Infra” where Enric, the sole survivor of a Halloween party massacre, accompanies police to the original crime scene with eye watering results. This is really interesting, cleverly shot and the last scenes are pretty gruesome. “As Above, So Below”
In Casper Kelly’s “Fun Size” four friends who are far too old to be trick or treating get swallowed by a “one per person” candy bowl. This is the absolute weirdest of the bunch and for me it’s also one of the weakest, it’s well shot but the idea is just too out there, even for V/H/S.
Alex Ross Perry ’s “Kidprint” delves into the fear of kidnappings. Set in a local video store that specialises in creating video IDs which can be used to help search for missing children. This one felt like it should be the one that sits with you after the credits roll. Alas, it’s just a bit all over the place and in the end, despite a slight twist that could have been made more of, it’s not very good. Crazy this used to be an actual service from Blockbuster…
Last up a homemade house of horrors comes to life in Micheline Pitt-Norman and R.H. Norman’s Home Haunt as a family construct their annual haunted house for Halloween and all of the exhibits come to life. Not bad but you may feel you’ve seen it all before and there’s some acting in it that may just bring you out of the scary moments.
What elevates a Blu-ray – especially for horror fans – isn’t just how it looks and sounds, but what it gives you beyond the main feature. Thankfully, this release isn’t too stingy:
Filmmaker commentaries offer insight straight from the directors behind the segments.
Behind-the-Scenes features for key shorts like Diet Phantasma and Coochie Coochie Coo give a peek at how some of the more deranged visuals came together.
A deleted scene from KidPrint, a fun Diet Phantasma Uninterrupted Cut (this is the film that holds all the pieces together in the film), the mock Diet Phantasma commercial, and a small gallery of behind the scenes photos are all in attendance.
They’re not feature-length documentaries, nor an exhaustive set of production essays, but they’re a welcome layer of meat on the bones for collectors and genre obsessives.
You need to come into V/H/S Halloween expecting unevenness; this entry is emblematic of the franchise’s broader strengths and weaknesses.
Some segments lean into inventive horror play with memorable imagery – like Coochie Coochie Coo, which throws urban legend logic into a scare maze with a touch Resident Evil – while others feel like they struggle to reach the payoff.
The film itself feels like a V/H/S rollercoaster – some drops stick the landing, others wobble uncomfortably but overall it’s just really fun. The Blu-ray doesn’t fix the narrative bumps, but it does preserve them faithfully.
For collectors and horror anthology devotees, this is a worthwhile pickup. It won’t convert the uninitiated to found-footage, nor will it make V/H/S out to be coherent cinema, but it does offer a solid home presentation with enough extras to justify the physical disc over a streaming click-through.
