V/H/S Halloween Directors Say Found‑Footage Is Hard AF — Yes, There Are Eyeballs and Exploding Kids
The seven directors of V/H/S Halloween told an audience at Fantastic Fest 2025 that making found‑footage horror remains “hard as fuck to shoot.” The 2025 anthology is the eighth V/H/S film, features five Halloween‑set shorts plus a wrapper called “Diet Phantasma”, and it is streaming on Shudder now.
Found‑footage challenges
Directors at the V/H/S Halloween premiere said the subgenre still demands specific choices on set. For example, everything a camera shows must be motivated by the person holding it. That means sound, performance, and camera behavior all need to feel natural. Consequently, small mistakes can break the audience’s suspension of disbelief quickly.
Practical effects also complicate things. When many effects must happen in a single take, shoots become time‑pressured and technically demanding. At the same time, some directors said the format can be liberating because blocking and coverage overlap: once the actor moves, the camera’s coverage is decided.
Directors’ views and quotes
Micheline Pitt of “Home Haunt” summed up the core issue plainly: “I think the most challenging thing as an artist is being limited by your creative ideas, because everything has to be motivated by the person holding the camera. So I think that’s the thing that’s hard as fuck for me, is to separate myself from my creativity and my ideas, and having to stay in a box.”
By contrast, Alex Ross Perry — director of “Kidprint” — said the restriction can be freeing. He explained the practical upside: “This is cool, this restriction actually is liberating, because you only have to figure out the same thing once.” He also described a moment of realization on day one: [realization] “Ohhh!”
Anna Zlokovic highlighted audience belief as another technical hurdle: “The sound has to feel like it’s actually happening. The performances have to feel grounded. If you have something like an adult man in a diaper, how do you sell that as realistic?”
R.H. Norman discussed rhythm when shooting oner‑style takes: “Our approach was, ‘OK, this is edited in camera. There’s this guy, the dad, and he turns the camera on and off, and those are our cuts.’”
Paco Plaza stressed realism in camera behavior: “For me, the most challenging thing is making the audience believe the people operating the camera would continue, instead of running away.” He added that the camera often needs to arrive late to events to feel authentic.
Memorable single shots
The directors also named specific shots they were proud of. Alex Ross Perry described an analog setup in “Kidprint” where a character sits in front of four monitors playing synced videos — a planned, multi‑day setup that achieved a single image he wanted.
Micheline Pitt called the witch’s flight in “Home Haunt” an “impossible shot” that worked after precise marks and only two takes. R.H. Norman said his team treated many takes as opportunities to find different rhythms because they could only count on two or three tries per shot.
Anna Zlokovic pointed to a long interior move in “Coochie Coochie Coo” — a single, continuous take through stairs, doors, a playroom and more — and said the first five takes “suuuuucked” before it began to feel real.
Bryan M. Ferguson recalled that the exploding child effect in “Diet Phantasma” required a last‑minute reset and then worked on the final run; Paco Plaza said the eyeball‑vomit moment in his segment was fun to shoot and relied on a skilled performer.
Where to watch and source
V/H/S Halloween premiered at Fantastic Fest 2025 and is available on Shudder. For the directors’ full Q&A and the festival screening context, Polygon published an interview that included a clip link to the panel discussion.
Finally, the filmmakers agreed that found‑footage remains a mix of challenge and payoff: hard to stage, but effective when the technical and performance pieces align.
