Plot
The film is presented as an anthology of five films built into a narrative, which acts as its sixth film. Themed around Halloween, each short is linked together with the concept of footage as every segment is from various VHS tapes that depict different scenarios of horror stories.
"Diet Phantasma" (frame narrative) — Prologue
The frame narrative focuses on the documentary experiment scene in 1982. The Octagon Company is planning to launch a new soda called "Diet Phantasma". They bring in multiple test subjects to try the formula before the beverage is put on shelves. The COO of the company, Dr Rothschild, is also brought in to view the subject reviews. However, the subjects are unaware that the soda is made with the extract of vicious poltergeists. The first subject, a man designated 37, tries it; he soon begins to bleed from his eyes and face. The can then sprouts tentacles which attach to his face. The body and the room are then cleaned up for the next subjects.
"Coochie Coochie Coo"
- Directed and Written by Anna Zlokovic
Lacie and Kaleigh are high school students that decide to go out for one last night of trick-or-treating. They come across a trio of boys who tell them that "The Mommy" will get them because they are too old for trick-or-treating. The girls continue onward and begin to ruin other trick or treater's nights by stealing their candy. Kaleigh mentions to Lacie that a friend of theirs dressed as a cheerleader disappeared last year, but Lacie ignores it. They soon come across a house that appears out of nowhere and is disregarded by other trick or treaters. They knock on the door and go inside, but discover that they are trapped by the Mommy who leaves behind squirming fetuses and trails of milk.
Lacie and Kaleigh come across three other individuals including the cheerleader. They all have infantile faces and act like babies. They also learn that the Mommy was once a woman who became pregnant as a result of rape. This woman hanged herself while pregnant to escape motherhood and now beckons victims into being her children. After making her fall asleep with a lullaby, the Mommy breaks Lacie's ribs and drags her away into the basement. Kaleigh chases after her and discovers that The Mommy has already converted Lacie into one of her children. Resigned to her fate, Kaleigh lies down with the other victims as the Mommy sings her lullaby again. As her lullaby ends, the Mommy starts to despairingly laugh while the footage ends.
"Diet Phantasma" — First interlude
Two new subjects, a man and woman known as 38 and 39, are brought in. The test does not go well; 38’s can sprays acid in his face, causing it to swell and the skin on his hands to tear off. 39's can moves toward her as the tab flies off, enters her mouth, and exits through her throat, killing her.
"Ut Supra Sic Infra"
An abandoned mansion in Madrid, allegedly home to a famous Italian medium in the past, is the scene of a bizarre mass murder during a Halloween party, in which all of the victims' eyeballs were removed and are nowhere to be found. Enric, the only survivor, is questioned by police. The questioning is intercut with film of the party Enric attended. The film shows Enric and several of his friends entering the house and coming across an unconnected telephone in the center of the room, the walls covered in occult phrases and hieroglyphs. Enric discovers writing on the wall which says "Ut Supra Sic Infra" ("As Above, So Below") and reads it out loud three times. The phone rings and Enric answers it. He begins to convulse as the feed cuts out.
The investigators take Enric back to the house for a crime reconstruction. He is reluctant to re-enter the room, but the psychiatrist attending tells him that it is all in his head. They enter the cupola and Enric repeats the phrase, causing the phone to ring again. A police officer picks up the phone and hears nothing, but Enric once again convulses, seemingly possessed, then vomits the eyeballs before sending everyone in the room towards the ceiling, where they land on a pentagram. Enric enters through a door on ground level and comes out of a door above, walking upside down on the ceiling. Enric then proceeds to pull everyone's eyeballs out of their heads before dropping them back onto the floor dead as the footage ends.
"Diet Phantasma" — Second interlude
A young woman, Subject 40, is next. She takes a sip of her Diet Phantasma and claims that it smells awful, but tastes good. When instructed to drink the whole can, the poltergeist inside causes the subject's hands to break and twist before she vomits a black substance onto the table. Subject 40, now possessed, is able to see through the observation mirror, which she uses to interact with the scientists. The observers hit a button which causes the poltergeist to be sucked out of the subject and into a tube. She survives, but is taken away and burned alive with a flamethrower.
"Fun Size"
Haley, Austin, Lauren, and Josh leave an adult Halloween party disappointed, as there was no candy. They decide to get candy by trick-or-treating. Lauren and Josh are celebrating their engagement, but she confides in Haley that she is having second thoughts. They come across a bowl of bizarrely-named candies with a sign stating "one per person". They are confused by the names and baffled by a bar that looks like a phallus. They try searching online for information about the candy, but receive no results. When Austin reaches for a second piece of candy, a hand emerges and pulls him into the bowl, which then flies into the air and swallows the others.
The four find themselves inside a warehouse, in what appears to be a parallel reality. They are stalked and chased along blood-stained corridors by Fun Size, a humanoid being wearing a candy mascot costume, who demonstrates supernatural powers. Fun Size sends Austin into a machine where he is chopped up. His body parts are coated in caramel and chocolate, then turned into more of the strange candy bars. Haley has her face blown off with gumballs. Lauren and Josh try to escape via an air shaft which turns out to be another conveyor belt. Lauren admits that she does not want to marry Josh as he is killed. Lauren escapes outside of the factory and lands on an undistinguished exterior, possibly in the segment's original space and time frame. She attempts to remove her wedding ring, only for Fun Size to materialize in front of her and crush her skull, killing her.
A woman records her two children taking candy from Fun Size's bowl. The son claims to taste something metallic in his candy. The woman grabs the candy and sees that it is Lauren's finger, the metallic part being her wedding ring. The son admits that he took two candies as the bowl rises into the air to attack them while the footage ends.
"Diet Phantasma" — Third interlude
The next subject is 41, a young boy, who tries a sample with a lower dosage of poltergeist extract. He says that he loves the soda and asks for another. The scientists comply, giving him a can with more extract. As 41 opens the can, he instantly explodes. The scientists proceed to clean up the room for the next test.
"Kidprint"
During the fall of 1992, an American town is rocked by an unusual spate of child and teenager disappearances and murders. Tim Kaplan runs a local video store where he films "Kidprints", documentary videos that can be used to ID and help search for missing children. Tim and his wife are haunted by the reports of children disappearing and showing up dead with extensive mutilations and want to protect their two daughters.
During a sparsely attended Halloween gathering in the town square, Tim is told by a mother and a police officer that 17-year-old Olivia Hamel has gone missing. The officer asks Tim to return to the store and retrieve the backup for Olivia's Kidprint. At the closed store, he finds several monitors playing tapes of children either being tortured or begging for their lives. He discovers Olivia in the back, where his employee Bruce Dittman is terrorizing her.
It is revealed that Bruce has been using Tim's videos to locate and coerce children, so he can torture and kill them in the store while it is closed during weekends. The psychological torture includes forcing the children to stand in front of the same board and height chart used for Kidprint videos, and filming them as they slowly realize their predicament and start screaming. The physical torture involves different forms of mutilation. The one shown onscreen is skinning, as seen on a boy named Drew Stackhouse whom Bruce had lured to the store earlier. Shots show Bruce talking to Drew, convincing him to visit the store to play video games, then depict Bruce slicing skin from part of Drew's back and most of his face.
Bruce ambushes Tim, beats him and leaves him wearing the severed skin from Drew's face on his like a mask. Olivia and Drew are left in the same room. Finding Tim with the mask, they assume he is as deranged as Bruce and kill him. They try to leave, only for Bruce to murder them off-screen. Bruce also films himself in front of the Kidprint board, wearing Drew's face and donning a vulnerable, adult-fearing juvenile persona. Whether this is a reenactment of trauma he himself endured while trick-or-treating as a child, or simply meant as a sarcastic lampoon on his victims, is left unexplained.
Tim's body is found and everyone believes he was the murderer. Bruce tells reporters that he will take over Kaplan Electronics and continue Kidprint. The final scene shows a young girl screaming in front of the Kidprint board on November 4th, revealing that Bruce has continued his killing spree. The camera freezes and zooms in on the girl's face as the footage ends.
"Diet Phantasma" — Epilogue
The final test involves six subjects, five adults and a young girl. The technician warns Dr. Rothschild that the equipment is not engineered to handle this many subjects. However, he is furious that they are far behind schedule, so they proceed. As one subject opens her can, a video camera catches fire. Another subject gets his tongue ripped off after the can crushes itself in his mouth, then becomes possessed. The possessed subject crushes another subject's head until his eyes pop out, and he vomits the same black substance as Subject 40 all over another subject.
All the poltergeists are extracted from the subjects, except for the little girl, 47, who remains possessed. Dr. Rothschild asks what her favorite soda is and she replies, "Diet Phantasma". The other subjects, reanimated via possession, attempt to escape. With the knowledge that at least one person drank it and did not die, Dr. Rothschild orders his staff to manufacture and ship Diet Phantasma immediately, using the formula 47 drank. Choppy frame narrative suggests that the possessed subjects then broke through the observation window and killed the researchers.
"Home Haunt"
- Written and directed by Micheline Pitt-Norman & R.H. Norman
Keith loves setting up an elaborate haunted house with his wife Nancy and son Zack in their home every Halloween, but the now-teenage Zack no longer wants to participate in the family tradition. Keith convinces Zack to go to the store to pick up some items for the house. Keith sneaks into the back and finds a record called "Halloween Horrors", which he steals. Keith opens his haunted house for the neighborhood, playing the record. The music from the record causes supernatural occurrences, including the record bursting into flames and the lights going out, making everyone panic and flee in terror.
The monsters from the decorations suddenly come to life, each new room containing different types of monsters, killing most of the attendees. Zack, Keith and Nancy manage to survive and escape from the house, only for a witch to fly out and grab Zack's camera. The witch proceeds to massacre children who are out trick-or-treating. The entrance to the haunted house, which is shaped like a monster's jaws and hands, begins to come to life and break free from the building as the footage ends.
"Diet Phantasma" — Mid-credit scene
Subject 47 is seen in a commercial for Diet Phantasma. The commercial reveals that the soda is made from actual poltergeists. At first, 47 seems back to normal, but she drinks from a can and recites the product's slogan as her voice deepens and her eyes go solid white.
Reception
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes , 95% of 59 critics' reviews are positive.The website's consensus reads: "Consistently unnerving as it cycles through a series of shorts that are more treat than trick, V/H/S Halloween is one of the most purely enjoyable cassettes in the franchise yet." [8] Metacritic , which uses a weighted average , assigned the film a score of 68 out of 100, based on 11 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews. [9]
Writing for RogerEbert.com, critic Brian Tallerico mentioned that the film "feels the most tonally consistent" of the franchise, having "maybe the best batting average," and awarding it 3 out of 4 stars. [10] Similarly, Ryan Scott from /Film praised V/H/S/Halloween for being "darkly fun" and disturbing, highlighting the quality of the wraparound and also Perry's segment as "the darkest moment in 'V/H/S' history," scoring the film 8.5 out of 10. [11]
In a positive review, The Austin Chronicle's Richard Whittaker wrote that the antagonist from Zlokovic's segment "may go down as one of the series’ creepiest monsters", while also praising the Normans' closing segment as "surprisingly epic" and the preceding short from Perry as "the closest a segment has come in years to the early, edgy, innovative shocks of the first two V/H/S movies." [12] Slant Magazine rated the film 3 out of 4 stars, reporting that "[t]hough each segment has a slightly different stylistic flavor, they’re united by a devilish mean-spiritedness," also highlighting "the sadistic acts of torture carried out in 'Kidprint'". [13]
In a more indifferent review, Britt Hayes of MovieWeb.com commented on the anthology's uneavenness as "a mixed bag of treats", criticising the first two segments as "a little long", but overall saying the film is "another mostly entertaining gore-fest with a few gnarly tricks up its sleeve." [14] Similarly, Mike Boltz of JoBlo.com praised it as "perfect spooky season viewing for the initiated", comparing it to a modern Faces of Death , while criticizing the long running time, and giving the film a 7 out of 10. [15]
