'V/H/S/Halloween' Spoiler-Free Review
Image Source: TV Insider
As a fan of the V/H/S series, I was naturally thrilled to see that the next entry from the horror streaming service Shudder would be Halloween-centered. The previous films from the streaming platform have been pretty solid, so I was definitely looking forward to seeing what they had in store for a film centered around the best time of the year. Combine that with a 95% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and some real talent behind it, I figured that I was in for a spooky, fun time.
And I hate to say it, but I was… wrong.
I know, I’m in the minority here, and for anyone who did like it, more power to you. It definitely wasn’t the worst in the series (Viral takes that crown), but it’s definitely the weakest of the Shudder films. Like the rest of them, it has a wraparound segment intercut between a set of unrelated segments. Five of them in the case of V/H/S/Halloween. However, none of the segments really grabbed me. I don’t think any of them were actively awful, though the segment Fun Size was certainly not to my taste, no pun intended.
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Usually in these films, there’s one segment that stands out head and shoulders above the rest, regardless of how good the rest is. Think Amateur Night, Ozzy’s Dungeon or Safe Haven as prime examples. This film doesn’t really have one. All of the segments range from “not that great” to “meh.” None of them had any characters that I cared about at all. Half of the segments followed a similar format. They’re cardboard cutout characters who are excited about Halloween, then spooky things happen, and they spend the rest of the segment screaming and trying to escape. That’s hardly unusual for the series as a whole, but that doesn’t make it better here.
There were some attempts at dark humor in the film, most notably in the aforementioned Fun Size. Nothing landed period. The attempts to be funny were so ridiculous that they swung back around to just being cringeworthy and eye-rolling. There were also several instances of “why would you do that/not do that?” in most of the segments, even the decent ones. It really didn’t help endear me to the cardboard characters.
Another aspect that any found footage film has to address is “why are the characters still filming even when all of this stuff is happening and they’re running for their lives?” Previous segments in the series have done a good job with this, such as the glasses camera for Amateur Night, the dog cam in Slumber Party Alien Abduction, and the helmet cam in A Ride in the Park. Sorry to say that this doesn’t fare well in that department either, but I won’t ding it too much, since that’s just an issue with the genre as a whole.
Image Source: IMDb
But I’m seemingly just complaining. There are good things in this film, right? Definitely. The film takes full advantage of its Halloween setting, giving us a great example of a nearly pure Halloween film. The wraparound segment, only tangentially connected to the holiday during a mid-credits sequence, and with a few tweaks, you could take Halloween out of Kidprint and still have the same segment. On the whole, though, the film did an excellent job getting into the spirit of the spookiest time of the year.
As I said before, none of the segments besides maybe Fun Size were actively bad, and the directing, performances and atmosphere were pretty solid. I didn’t find myself actively wishing for the movie to be over, and there were some good times to be had. It also features a cameo from Rick Baker, who has a record seven Oscar wins for makeup, so that’s neat. If you’re in the mood for a fun Halloween movie, watch Trick r Treat. But if you’ve already seen that, this one isn’t the worst one to turn on.
Rating: 6.5/10
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