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Capsules

CAPSULE: V/H/S HALLOWEEN (2025)

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V/H/S Halloween is currently available for purchase or rental on video-on-demand.

DIRECTED BY: , Anna Zlokovic, Paco Plaza, , , R.H. Norman

FEATURING: David Haydn, Samantha Cochran, Natalia Montgomery Fernandez, Teo Planell, Lawson Greyson, Stephen Gurewitz, Carl William Garrison, Jeff Harms

PLOT: Six VHS found-footage style shorts themed around Halloween night.

Still from V/H/S Halloween (2025)

COMMENTS: Caspar Kelly throws down a metaphorical gauntlet statement for horror anthologies when he has a costumed pirate proclaim, “All candy is lame. Corporations have taken all the creativity out. We’ve had the same main candy bars for decades. The variety pack has no variety.” Will this variety pack have genuine variety? Kelly certainly does his bit (we’ll circle back around to it), but despite an interesting mix of new and established directors, at the risk of further mixing a metaphor about mixes, it’s a mixed bag.

This anthology opens with Bryan Ferguson’s contribution, supposed internal footage of a corporation focus-grouping its newest product, “Diet Phantasma,” across a field of very unlucky test subjects. This story (which is a stretch as a Halloween entry; it could have fit into any of V/H/S‘ previous 7 outings) is cut up and stretched across the length of the film. Although lead David Haydn’s arrogant disdain for the fates of his subjects lends the story some humor, the decision to chop it up was wise, since it gets repetitive: different gore effects are the only thing distinguishing the central episodes. The ending isn’t the big score you might have hoped for, either, but it’s passable. Paco Plaza, who co-directed the 2007 Spanish found footage zombie movie [REC], is a natural choice for this series, and his ofrenda en español is one of the stronger entries. It’s built around an ultimately predictable seance premise, but with some unexpected effects (including eyeball vomiting).  Debuting director R.H. Norman offers a well-characterized but well-worn tale of an amateur neighborhood haunted house that turns into a real haunted house after the purchase of a cursed prop. Perhaps the biggest surprise is Alex Ross Perry, the indie director best-known for his literate dramas and comedies (and, around here, for his experimental debut.) His “Kidprint” may not make much too much sense (what really is the market for this film-your-kid-for-identification business?), but the ending is unexpectedly brutal—more so, considering that we don’t think of Perry as a horror director. For better or worse—and to be clear, I didn’t find it one of the better entries—Perry is the one who dares to “go there.” (Kelly, whom we’re getting to, does offer some transgressive comedy, but his grossout gag isn’t on the level of “Kidprint”).

Anna Zlokovic’s “Coochie Coochie Coo” is from another new director, and the first full-length short after the soda pop introduction. Although it has naturalistic acting from the two leads and an unusual maternal theme for its boogeywoman, it plays like an instant cliché. Two high school senior girls want one last night of trick or treating before seguing into adulthood. They end up trapped in a mysterious haunted house full of eerie characters, jump scares, and the camera reliably glitching at tense moments. It’s a competent, but ultimately safe way to begin the series.

But Zlokovich’s short brings us, in a roundabout way, to Kelly’s “Fun Size,” the anthology’s weirdest and most divisive segment (we declare it the Peanut M&Ms of the grab bag, although some more traditional minded horror viewers complain it’s candy corn). This comic relief horror, placed in the dead center of the anthology, almost seems to start as a direct parody of “Coochie Coochie Coo” (which says more about how obvious the opener is than about any deliberate plan on Kelly’s part.) Both feature overage protagonists, almost identical  “Aren’t you a bit old for trick ‘r treating?” lines, and a bit about a candy bowl left in the open with a sign “one per person.” Of course, Kelly takes the premise in a crazy direction with the discovery that the unattended bowl contains candies no one has every heard of: “Snipp%rs,” “Larry Find,” and some unpronounceable varieties.  It turns out this candy is not only weirdly named, but also, um, weirdly shaped. When the 20-somethings try to take extra candy, they’re sucked through the bowl and down into a factory where they learn the secrets of how these confections are truly made. “Fun Size” includes about as many layers as a film this short will allow: parody, satire, horror, and a subtextual theme about fear of commitment. In a full-length Kelly movie, this segment would merely be an introduction that spun off into weirder and weirder meta-commentary.  It’s entertaining, especially by the standards of this format, but if anything, “Fun Size” leaves the audience wanting more. Kelly needs to make a feature-length Halloween movie to complement his two Christmas horror films. (Then a Thanksgiving movie, then a Valentine’s Day one…)

Though far from “elevated horror,” if you’re looking for a common theme to V/H/S/ Halloween, it’s a general anti-corporate sentiment, whether the commodity being foisted on us is ethically questionable soda pop or ethically questionable candy. Of course, pretty much every independent movie ever made has a general anti-corporate sentiment, so that’s not a lot to hang your hat on. Instead, I’d recommend the latest V/H/S solely based the clever goof of “Fun Size,” with the supporting features ranging from acceptable to mildly interesting. If nothing else, at least they’re a varied bunch—even if some of the variation comes in expected flavors.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“It’s a mixed bag, sure, with a handful of duds, a few near-masterpieces, and a lot of inspired weirdness in between… sometimes, the real treat is just watching ambitious horror filmmakers cut loose and make something wild, no matter how messy it gets.”–Nicolas Delgadillo, Knotfest (contemporaneous)

Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: IMPOLEX (2009)

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DIRECTED BY: Alex Ross Perry

FEATURING: Riley O’Bryan, Kate Lyn Sheil, Bruno Meyrick Jones, voice of Eugene Mirman

PLOT: A lone soldier trudges through the forest in search of a pair of V-2 rockets, but consistently loses his way thanks to a combination of tiredness, apathy, and a series of hallucinated distractions.

Still from Impolex (2009)

COMMENTS: Like many filmmakers before him, Alex Ross Perry broke in with a microbudgeted, limited cast, one-set, single-premise film to demonstrate his talent. These “calling cards” can provide a fascinating peek into an extraordinary career poised to explode. (I have reviewed one such example on this very site.) Perry’s introduction keeps things pretty simple, from a production standpoint. It’s as a storyteller that he shows an unusually high level of ambition, given that he’s decided that his debut feature is the right place to attempt an unsanctioned adaptation of ’s “Gravity’s Rainbow.” No quickie horror film for him.

Having never attempted the literary Everest that is Pynchon’s most acclaimed work myself, I take it on faith that shared character names, common elements (missile numbers, octopi, bananas), and a similarly surreal milieu speak to the faithfulness of Perry’s covert adaptation. The secretive author has only been officially translated to the screen once, but since Perry includes the novel amongst several nonfiction works in an end-credits bibliography, we can stipulate its influence here. What suffers in the translation to a visual medium is the nature of its central character, a feckless fellow who may seem introspective on the page, but comes across as lethargic or even clueless on the screen. Tyrone (Riley O’Bryan) stumbles around the forest in no particular direction, mumbling in a grand display of Gen Z-style elocution. His ostensible goal is to collect two precious German rockets as part of a secret military operation (although his targets are mere models rather than the actual four-story missile that paved the way for modern rocketry), but having located one of the pair, he seems to have no prospects for finding the second rocket, and has a hard enough time keeping hold of the first. When he’s not toting or spooning the wayward projectile, he’s fending off the intrusions of people who categorically cannot be there, including a one-eyed Australian who gives off Raoul Duke vibes, an old colleague who is also evidently an escaped criminal, and an octopus who shows up just for the hang. And so he wanders, going nowhere and fending off plot development like a mystery box TV show with no definitive end date.

There’s strong reason to believe that we’re watching the dream—or possibly the Jacob’s Ladder-style final moments—of our hero, possibly moments after perusing Pynchon’s novel while eating too much spicy food. Aside from Tyrone, no one dresses in period garb. At one point, he reads from the secret files which dictate his mission, but when it comes time to identify the superiors who have sent him on this assignment, he formally reports, “I cannot say, I’m afraid. That would be telling.” He describes himself as having unique abilities for the task at hand, but never demonstrates that he has any skills at all. He doesn’t have a compass, his orders contain maps of Scandinavia and irrelevant photographs, and he never comes across the slightest trace of the wider world beyond the forest. Tyrone is perpetually on his own with no direction home, and he displays very little interest in improving his lot.

The most frequent interruption in his wanderings is the repeated intrusion of Katje, the girlfriend he left behind and whose biggest contribution seems to be as a nagging harpy throwing cold water on his efforts. But Katje finally gets her turn in a nine-minute sequence near the film’s end where she lays bare his cruelties. It’s a crucial shift in perspective, as it provides her only opportunity to speak her mind as a real human instead of a wet blanket. It also calls into question the very nature of Tyrone’s mission, as the flashback appears to take place in the now rather than in the ostensible World War II-era setting we expect. When Katje returns one last time to try and advise Tyrone, she appears as a protector instead of a critic. But this is the story’s last new element before it stumbles toward the closing credits, and it reads as a twist rather than as a legitimate pathway. In any event, Tyrone pays her no heed. His fate is fixed. The forest is the end. 

Perry’s Pynchonesque journey benefits from uniqueness, as there aren’t too many narratives where the hero actively goes nowhere and does nothing. But there’s not really any reward for coming along for the ride. Without a central character to be interested in, an objective to be achieved, or intriguing visuals or occurrences to capture a viewer’s attention, Impolex is aimless and dull. We are all Katje, fruitlessly waiting all night for someone to come home. 

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Reveling in its provocative absurdity, ‘Impolex’ is a madly uncommercial head-scratcher that will strike a dream-logic chord in some viewers and leave others in a ‘My kid could do better than that’ mood… a nine-minute single-take closeup of a woman (Kate Lyn Sheil), delivering a weirdly revelatory monologue, unexpectedly catapults the film to another level, breaking viewers’ otherwise understandable alienation.” – Ronnie Scheib, Variety (contemporaneous)

(This movie was nominated for review by Dwarf Oscar. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)