V/H/S/Halloween + The Creeps

V/H/S/Halloween (2025). USA. 115 min

• Direction: Anna Zlokovic (Coochie Coochie Coo), Paco Plaza (Ut supra sic infra), Casper Kelly (Fun Size), Alex Ross Perry (Kidprint), Micheline Pitt-Norman & R. H. Norman (Home Haunt), Bryan M. Ferguson (Diet Phantasma).
• Cast: David Hayon, Anna McKelvie, Samantha Cochran, Natalia Montgomery, Teo Planell, María Romanillos, Lawson Greyson, Riley Nottingham, Stephen Gurewitz, Carl William Garrison, Jeff Harms, Noah Diamond.

Eighth instalment in the franchise which hit the big time in 2012, known in some countries as The Tapes of Fear (boo!) and produced by those cool folk at the companies Bloody Disgusting and Shudder Original Films. The eighth instalment, with seven filmmakers on the rampage. They include a real favourite of such publications as The Daily Beast, Dread Central and Screen Rant, Anna Zlokovic, and one of our home-grown stars, Paco Plaza, who co-wrote with Alberto Marini the episode entitled Ut supra sic infra. No, better not to read that expression out loud, as it links the cosmos above with that below. Much less should you repeat it three times. You know what happened to Enric when he did that. The phone started ringing, he picked it up, and… There are five more stories. And a can of slimming soda that you also really shouldn't try, boo!

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The Creeps (2025). Finland. 96 min

• Direction: Marko Mäkilaakso.
• Cast: Chris Cavalier, Veronica Jarvis, Christopher Lambert, Kheba Touray, Matti Paalanen, Ismo Leikola.

In one of the great moments of this wonderfully outrageous Finnish film acted in English, making comments on the American way of life that could trigger serious disputes between the USA and the homeland of Teemu Nikki, director of the intriguing and so bitter Death Is a Problem for the Living (2023), the protagonist, a Yank who at least still has half a brain, is in the portable toilet installed out in the snow for a mega monster party. He receives the following message from one of his fellow partygoers: “Don't come out. This is like Gremlins 4, for real. They're killing everyone!”. Who? Hateful, walking snowmen with a language of their own, who are after everyone. This is a uniquely extravagant film, including its own memorable vocabulary in Finnish, and when it decides to gross out, it pulls no punches.