VHS Halloween (2025)

Trick or Treat!

The VHS franchise has long been associated with the Halloween season. Six of the eight installments have been released in October. Surprisingly, however, VHS Halloween is the first installment that exclusively features Halloween segments. There are five stories (six counting the frame narrative) in this one.

Is there life left in this venerable found footage franchise? Luckily, the answer is hell yes! VHS Halloween takes some time to get into the full spooky season spirit, but once it builds momentum, it’s a wild and entertaining ride. Each story is set on or around Halloween, obviously, but they each take place in different eras.

As I did last year with VHS Beyond, I’m going to go through each segment and give an overall rating at the end.

“Diet Phantasma” (frame Story)

This story is about a soda company who’s secretly testing a new product, Diet Phantasma, at their headquarters. A sociopathic executive accompanied by his sycophantic staff watches as the test subjects drink the soda and die horribly in a variety of outrageous ways.

At first, it’s not clear how this relates to Halloween, but the company’s chilling goal for their new soda is gradually unveiled. This segment does a nice job building up an intriguing mystery. Also, stay tuned for a mid-credits sequence that puts an exclamation point on this story.

“Coochie Coochie Coo”

Two teenage girls cause mayhem on a Halloween night in the early 2000s. They steal candy from kids and make a general nuisance of themselves despite warnings that a specter named “The Mommy” will take revenge for their impudence. After the girls stupidly enter a mysterious house in search of more candy, they discover the truth behind the legend.

This segment is pretty good. I think that the general story concept could have been set at any time of year. It doesn’t have the full Halloween-ish feel of some of the later installments. It seems like something that was written as a generic story and then adapted to fit with Halloween. It also has a rather predictable conclusion.

“Ut Supra Sic Infra”

The police investigate a local Halloween party that somehow went terribly wrong. The lone survivor is interrogated as a suspect. He and the police return to the scene of the party, but encounter a sinister supernatural force. This is a simple and straightforward story. Not a whole lot of plot here. It transitions between two timelines – the party and the investigation.

This is another entertaining segment with fun practical effects. As with the prior story, though, Halloween seems almost incidental. This segment could easily have been set at a party at any time of year. If you’re squeamish about eyeballs, skip this one.

“Fun Size”

After two reasonably good segments, this is where VHS Halloween really kicks into high gear, with the bizarre and brilliant “Fun Size.” A group of young adults find a mysterious candy bowl filled with strange brands they’ve never heard of.

The sign nearby requests to please take just one. After one member of the group commits the cardinal sin of taking multiple candies, they are transported to a bizarre underground factory that uses human body parts to make candy bars.

The friends are stalked by two creepy mascots. You’ll be rooting for the baddies in this one. The friends are intentionally insufferable. This segment’s pitch-black humor and wild gore make it one of the most fun segments of the entire series. If you like Trick ‘r Treat, and who doesn’t, you’ll enjoy the theme of people being punished for disobeying a Halloween tradition.

“Kidprint”

Kidprint is another strong segment and the creepiest of the bunch. Tim runs a local video store. It’s Halloween 1992 and a series of kidnapping have spooked the local community. Tim creates kid prints at his store – short videos designed to be used by law enforcement if a kid is abducted.

I immediately suspected that Tim is involved with the kidnappings, but this segment is more clever than I expected. It builds to the spookiest and most disturbing ending of any segment in VHS Halloween.

I’m keeping this short because I don’t want to spoil anything, but I will say that if you avoid movies with graphic depictions of kids being harmed, you’ll probably want to skip this segment.

I also enjoyed the ’90s setting, which is a nostalgic time period for me. Luckily there wasn’t a serial child kidnapper on the prowl in my neighborhood!

“Home Haunt”

The final segment (before the end of the frame narrative) is another ’90s installment about a local haunted house operated annually by a middle-aged man, his wife, and son. The kid, now a teenager, doesn’t want to participate anymore, but the dad insists.

The folks in the neighborhood line up to enter the house, with some skeptics commenting that the attraction is lame and won’t be scary at all.

There’s a new addition to the haunt this year – a spooky music record called “Halloween Horrors.” Unbeknownst to the family, the record has supernatural powers when it’s played. Carnage and mayhem ensue as the haunt becomes all too real.

This is another inventive and outrageous segment. Like many of the previous stories, it’s more funny than scary.

Brief General Thoughts

VHS Halloween is the most darkly humorous installment of the franchise. If people are looking to be terrified, they’re probably going to be disappointed, but I think this movie’s approach is a tacit acknowledgement that it’s really difficult to make part 8 of anything scary.

Was Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan scary? The VHS concept has been done to death, so why not have fun with it?

Ranking the Segments

To me, the last three segments were easily better than the first two, with the frame narrative ranked in between.

Fun Size
Kid Print
Home Haunt
Diet Phantasma
Coochie Coochie Coo
Ut Supra Sic Infra

Rating

VHS Halloween is funnier and even more outrageous than its predecessors. Although it’s not as creepy as some of the previous installments, it packs more than enough deliciously spooky thrills and chills to be a worthy addition to your Halloween movie marathon.

Rating from 1 (avoid at all costs) to 10 (masterpiece): 8

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