Found footage horror anthologies have become October’s most reliable tradition, as dependable as pumpkin spice and significantly bloodier. Since its scrappy 2012 Sundance debut, V/H/S has churned out installments with mechanical precision, each promising visceral thrills through cursed cassettes. Eight entries deep, the franchise is starting to feel like the horror equivalent of a late-night candy binge—some of it sweet, most of it stale, and a few pieces that make you wonder what you just swallowed.

The 2025 entry, V/H/S/Halloween, sticks to the formula: five found-footage horror shorts wrapped around a barely-there frame story. As always, it’s a grab bag. Sometimes thrilling. Sometimes revolting. Mostly uneven. The series also reaches a crossroads in my mind.  Do they continue the annual grind or pause for creative rejuvenation? Two genuinely impressive segments prove life remains in these tapes, but the middle hour suggests rest might be overdue.

This year’s wraparound is titled Diet Phantasma, a fake corporate PSA from Bryan M. Ferguson about a deadly soda being tested on human guinea pigs. It plays like Robocop if it had been edited on a flip phone. Loud, incoherent, and desperate for satire points it never earns. It’s the kind of opening that makes you consider turning the whole thing off. You shouldn’t—because buried in this chaos of the next 110 minutes are two killer segments that actually justify the runtime.

The first is Anna Zlokovic’s  Coochie Coochie Coo and it jolts the film alive, a freakshow in the best way. Two teens wander into the wrong suburban house on Halloween and end up face-to-face with a demented, goo-dripping “Mommy” figure who wants to adopt them forever. It’s claustrophobic, weirdly sad, and anchored by incredible creature design. Imagine Coraline by way of Inside, filtered through pure VHS grime. It’s that good. It’s the closest this collection gets to iconic. REC co-director Paco Plaza follows with Ut Supra Sic Infra, a Spanish-language detour that doesn’t entirely follow franchise rules. Following a massacre survivor returning to the crime scene with police, Plaza wrings tension through restraint rather than excess. It’s slow, but it sticks.

Then the wheels fall off spectacularly.

Casper Kelly delivers Fun Size, where candy-greedy teens enter parallel dimensions of body horror. It aims for twisted whimsy but lands between grating and incoherent. What starts as mischievous Halloween chaos curdles fast. Worse still, Alex Ross Perry‘s Kidprint commits the cardinal anthology sin: it’s vile without purpose. Set in a video store offering home recordings to identify missing children, the segment spirals into implied child murder. It’s not just mean-spirited—it’s reprehensible without earning its shock value.

Mercifully, newcomers Micheline Pitt-Norman and R.H. Norman close strong with Home Haunt. A family-run Halloween attraction becomes terrifyingly real when a cursed LP brings decorations to murderous life. The pacing builds beautifully, and despite VHS grime, visuals pop with retro charm, delivering the Halloween spirit the title promised. This segment alone suggests the Normans are voices worth following.

The cast of unknowns handles found footage’s awkward conventions with surprising skill. Unlike previous installments suffering from theatrical overacting, this ensemble commits to understated terror. The naturalistic approach serves stronger segments well, particularly Zlokovic’s opener where mounting panic feels authentically captured rather than performed. Plaza’s Spanish cast brings documentary realism even while breaking franchise conventions. Middle segments suffer not from poor acting but from scripts giving performers nothing beyond screaming at flickering lights.

Technically, V/H/S/Halloween embraces deliberately degraded aesthetics with abandon. VHS filters layer thick over every frame while shaky cam reaches nauseating extremes. At this point, it’s less atmosphere and more camouflage for bad effects. Flashing lights assault retinas with epileptic fervor, creating viewing experiences that blur between atmosphere and assault. Sound design alternates between muffled analog hiss and ear-splitting screams, authentically replicating damaged basement tapes but testing audience endurance. That raw, DIY energy that once made V/H/S feel unpredictable now feels more like an excuse.

The commitment to looking terrible has become a crutch. Constant flickering, glitch overlays, and aggressive shakiness border on unwatchable. Combined with a nearly two-hour runtime, the result feels less like an immersive horror than an endurance test. “Looking bad on purpose” shouldn’t mean “looking impossible to watch.”

This reflects our current content crisis: a focus on quantity over quality, prioritizing the algorithm over artistic creativity. These segments feel rushed for October deadlines rather than refined for impact. Where V/H/S/85 cleverly interconnected stories and early films maintained thematic coherence, this feels like disparate shorts thrown together because Halloween was approaching. Most of this latest installment feels like content for content’s sake. And that’s a terrible fate for a series built on transgression. The lazy soda wraparound offers none of the mythology-building that made earlier frames compelling.

There’s something oddly comforting about annual V/H/S drops, like evil advent calendars. But repetition breeds apathy. The formula needs remixing before seams completely split. The best entries (94, 85) embraced interconnectedness and discovery. Here, too many segments feel delivered under deadline pressure rather than creative urgency.

As horror fans, we’re accustomed to riding highs and lows. Coochie Coochie Coo and Home Haunt justify viewing, but the rest drags everything into just-okay territory. Eight films deep, it’s time to reinvent or regroup. Let ideas ferment until they are truly cursed. Return swinging. Because when this series hits, it devastates. But V/H/S/Halloween mostly misses, suggesting these tapes might need rewinding.