Every year Shudder releases an anthology film consisting of several “found footage” shorts, usually set in the 80s/90s, and “Halloween” is the latest. The theme here is, well Halloween, and the stories all use the holiday as the setting for their stories. I usually look forward to these since they’re good spooky fun. This year was no exception.
The five stories from this years offering were somewhat hit or miss, but they were all oozing fun Halloween vibes. Even the worst one (“Fun Size”) had some great cheesy stuff that will stick with me a while.
A stand out this year is surprisingly the story that acts as the wrapper for all the other stories (“Diet Phantasma”). This slot is usually more filler than thriller, but this time it seems they nailed it, leaning into the disjointed format a bit more. It consists of a series of snippets from an R&D department testing a new soda made with some kind of ectoplasm, and the results go haywire each time. It’s great and they keep it unexpected.
Overall, it’s a fun collection of scary stories that hit all the notes for a good Halloween soaked time.
4 out of 5