All through October, I’ll be posting reviews of the best of the best films in the horror genre released since October 1, 2025, through September 30, 2026. As an added bonus, I’ll be doing a secondary review that may be somewhat related to the main review or slightly missed the countdown by inches. Follow along the countdown every day in October. Feel free to agree, disagree, or better yet, give me your own picks for your favorite horror movies of the year. Happy Halloween!

The Best in Horror 2025-2026 So Far…

#31 – DOLLY (GATOR FACE)
#30 – THINESTRA (SACCHARINE)
#29 – ONSLAUGHT (BEAST OF WAR)
#28 – READY OR NOT 2: HERE I COME (PENNY LANE IS DEAD)
#27 – IN OUR BLOOD (V/H/S/HALLOWEEN)

#27 – IN OUR BLOOD (2024)

Released on October 24, 2925!
Streaming on Amazon Prime from Utopia!
Directed by Pedro Kos.
Written by Steven Klein, Aaron Kogan, Clay Tweel.
Check out the trailer here!

A young filmmaker Emily (Brittany O’Grady) seeks answers and to check up on her estranged mother Sam (Alanna Ubach) who is a recovering addict. With her cameraman Danny (E.J. Bonilla) in tow, Emily makes the trip from Los Angeles to New Mexico, hoping to make this reunion into some kind of documentary. But after an emotional reunion, Emily and Danny find that Sam disappears the very next day. In fear of a relapse, the filmmaking pair try to figure out where Sam is and if she is even still alive.

Are the actors successfully acting like they aren’t acting?
The acting is solid and believable. Both leads make comfortable banter between one another that feels very real. Like they have been friends for a while. The background characters seem to be real homeless people and again, do well with what they are given. All in all, everything feels authentic and unscripted.

Does the footage found seem authentic and untouched by additional production?
There is a leap at the very end that is outside of what would be called found footage. Other than that, everything seems to be coming from the same hand-held camera with very little edits. There are a few beats where some background noise is amplified that might have been added postproduction, but if it did, the added music wasn’t invasive. It all feels like raw footage.

Is there an up-nose BLAIR WITCH confessional or a REC-drag away from the camera?
There is a confessional of sorts giving a bit of context in the final act. This occurs at the beginning and then the scene is repeated in context at the end. It wasn’t obnoxious, given what transpires. I’m being intentionally vague to respect spoilers.

Why don’t they just drop the camera and get the hell out of there?
The point of the film is that Emily is making a documentary about reconnecting with her mom. So, the camera isn’t dropped for the sake of catching everything on film. When the camera is finally dropped during the climax, it’s picked up by someone else. So again, everything feels unforced.

Does anything actually happen? Is the lead in too long and the payoff too short?
Quite a bit of story is told in this film. The story of reconnecting with Emily’s mom is compelling, mainly because of the acting of the leads and the genuine look at the inner workings of the treatment center caring for these homeless and addicted souls. There is a mystery unfolding as Sam disappears halfway through and the search for her becomes the priority. This mystery unfolds in a way that doesn’t feel like a moment of filler.

Does the film add anything to the subgenre and is it worth watching?
It’s one thing that a film feels authentic, but that’s only half the battle to be a good movie. It also has to bring something new to the table or at least do something right. IN OUR BLOOD does a whole lot right. Mainly, it tells a compelling story that unfolds meticulously, leading the viewer along with small revelations that leads to a whopper of a surprise at the end. The movie might annoy those who need to know exactly what type of sub genre the film sits in right away, but if you let this one take you, I think you’ll be like me and be pleasantly surprised by the big finale. It made me want to rewatch and study the clues dropped throughout the story, which made the reveal obvious, but covered it with solid storytelling and engrossing performances. I highly recommend IN OUR BLOOD, especially for those who think the found footage sub-genre is stale. This one proved the nay-sayers wrong.

Worth Noting – V/H/S/HALLOWEEN (2025)

Released on October 3, 2025!
Streaming on Shudder!
Directed/ Written by Bryan M. Ferguson, Anna Zlokovic, Paco Plaza, Casper Kelly, Alex Ross Perry, Micheline Pitt, R.H. Norman.
Check out the trailer here!

But before we begin, I must get something of my chest. I admit it. I’m a bit obsessive when it comes to my found footage horror movies. There are a lot of bad ones out there, sure. And most of them are that way because they fail to feel like authentic footage that has been found. Additions like music, crazy edits between camera sources, dream sequences and hallucinations that show up on camera looking into the psyche of those holding the camera, all the usual things used in a cinematically filmed movie should just not be a part of a found footage film. When they show up, it immediately takes me out of the film and thus kills that illusion that this is footage found. And I hate that. I’ll admit that the film is effectively scary when it is, but for me, it fails as found footage if it has these elements. I mention this because even though V/H/S is a long running fond footage series, it makes some of these mistakes. The franchise has been around for 23 years and has produced some of the most shocking found footage sequences put on tape. So, seeing this series not follow the simple found footage format is disheartening. Still, the film has its merits, which I will get into as I dissect each segment.

Another thing I like to do with V/H/S movies, besides holding them up to a strict found footage format, is that I avoid looking at who directed what sequence going in. And I write the review as I watch it, given that I am home watching it on SHUDDER. It makes for a richer experience for me going back at the end and realizing what up-and-coming director did what sequence and I’ll do the same here in this review.

Gone is the attempt to make a wraparound involving the discovery of a set of video tapes that are then played. This is ok for me, since there are only so many ways the franchise can re-do this sequence, so this is a forgivable change to form. This time, the wraparound focuses on a group of scientists testing out a new drink called Diet Phantasma on a group of volunteer taste testers. It’s made clear from the get-go that this is no ordinary drink. It’s made from real ghosts and has only one calorie! The first test goes…wrong, let’s say, and as the tests continue through the film in between the other segments, the scientists try to dilute the drink to be less…destructive on the taster. This segment works mainly because the result of the tasting differs in each test, while all of them are goppy and grotesque. This series of segments are quite similar to the masks kill the wearers in HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH, but still, it makes for a fun premise to return to in-between the rest of the tales.

Ther first official segment is “Coochie Coochie Coo,” a funhouse style tale about a pair of high school seniors who dress up as babies for Halloween to get one last holiday candy run around their neighborhood. But as their antics escalate, the local kids warn them about a local legend of the Mommy and her house of horrors. Sure enough, the two kids find themselves at the doorstep of this Mommy and foolishly go inside. This results in the two girls running around in the dark with a single light from their video camera, encountering one disgusting horror after the next. This one is filled with every gross substance one associates with babies and their mommies, from soiled diapers to baby formula, so it is downright gross at times. But on top of the horrifying creature effects and the prevalence of oozy substances, the first-person perspective slowly pans around in the dark, while the Mommy and her children could be lurking around in the shadows anywhere. This one will get under your skin. It’s a good one that is equal parts gross and scary, even though the kids are insufferable as all get out and deserve every bit of torment they receive.

Segment two is called “Ut Supra Sic Infra” or “As Above So Below” which has nothing to do with the other found footage film of the same name. This one splits the story into two parts. In one, a detective and someone held for questioning return to a crime scene where a group of people were murdered on Halloween night. In the other, the story follows the events that were recorded on the victims’ cell phone. While the story is creepy in many ways, I think those behind this episode need to re-read their found footage rulebooks. Found footage isn’t two separate stories edited together. The more hands on the footage, the less authentic it feels. The segment even gets fancy and has the suspect pointing where his friends were in the empty room and then as the camera pans, there is a transition to the night in question with the kids. Sure, it makes for a fun way of editing from one scene to the next in a regularly filmed movie, but this kind of stuff goes against what found footage is supposed to be. Sure, I may be a bit obsessive about maintaining authenticity in these found footage films, but stuff like that ruins the illusion of immediacy and makes it less believable this is raw footage playing out as it happened. Having made so many found footage segments, the producers of the V/H/S should have noticed this and corrected it or at least steered the director in the right direction. The thing is, this segment didn’t need the flashback footage and would have been a much stronger one without it as everything necessary to tell an effective story could have been told through one forensics camera.

Segment Three “Fun Size” might have some rough acting at the beginning from its main four stars, particularly the guys, but it soon devolves into another fun-house horror segment reminiscent of the “10/31/98” sequence from the first V/H/S that give the guys at Radio Silence their boost to stardom. This one deals with a house that asks its trick-or-treaters to only take one piece of candy from a bowl left out on the porch. If you get greedy, the bowl itself transports the grabber into a nightmare factory lead by a pumpkin headed freak and his goblin henchman. This segment moves fast and furious and really takes advantage of the frenetic pace to keep the viewer on their toes pretty much all the way through. The pumpkin headed monster named Fun Size is cool as it looks cartoonish and otherworldly, though he does have a David Pumpkins vibe. And the method with which the candy is made is indeed grotesque. This one cheats by switching from one camera source to the next with no explanation other than the fact that the filmmakers needed to do it to tell the whole story, a detail that could have been worked around had a little more thought put into it. But all in all this is a solid sequence that moves at a pace that’ll quicken the heart.

Whoo! The award for most diabolical segment goes to #4, “Kidprint.” This one involves a 1992 small town terrorized by a serial killer who has been abducting and killing children. The whole sequence is filmed from the perspective of one camera, interspersed with news reports about the latest abduction. The fact that it is children being taken and killed makes this one a much more devious and visceral segment to endure. This one took balls to make as kids are often taboo in mainstream horror. It makes it even more potent in scares, even though this is a disturbing little watch. The scenes of bloody kids crying inter-cut between a party where kids are having fun is not for the weak. And the gross-out sequences where the killer peels the flesh from screaming kids is downright nauseating. Even though this one cheats by incorporating newsclips and quick cuts to the kids in torment, this is an all-wrong, but good and memorable one. Shoosh. It gave me serious chills. And I love it!

The fifth segment “Home Haunt” is a decent way the round out the film. It focuses on a father who is a little too excited for Halloween and his son, who used to be as into it as he is, but has now grown to be an apathetic teenager who wants nothing to do with the Halloween Haunt his father puts together every year. But this year is different, as Dad finds an old Halloween Sounds record at an antique shop and plays it during the haunt, unleashing all hell. Keep your eyes peeled for a guest appearance by effects guru Rick Baker and THE RETALIATORS and PRETTY BOY’s Sarah Niklin stars as Mom. “Home Haunt” of course is another fun-house style segment where all hell breaks loose and things jump out at you while you are in the first-person perspective of holding the camera. It’s as if you are in an actual Halloween Haunt and includes a creepy ass witch, some zombies, and some sheet ghosts that are cartoonish but a whole lot of fun. This one gets bloody and if two of the other films hadn’t used this Halloween Haunt motif, it would have been much more effective. As is, it felt like this particular style of segment was utilized a few too many times for one V/H/S film.

Now looking at the credits reveals some surprises. “Coochie Coochie Coo” was done by Anna Zlokovic who helmed last year’s surprise body horror gem APPENDAGE. I’m impressed at the original idea and monster used in this segment and she kept the action going as a wonderfully hectic pace. But shame on Paco Plaza for the second segment, “Ut Supra Sic Infra.” Plaza has made some amazing films and is half of the team that brought us the excellent [REC] series. One would think with that resume, he would not break so many found footage rules. I get that he was trying something new and experimental, but if there is a failure in V/H/S/HALLOWEEN, it belongs to this guy. I still love all his films though, like LA ABUELA, VERONICA, and of course the [REC] series. It tracks that the director of the batty “Fun Size” chapter is the product of YULE LOG filmmaker Casper Kelly. This one has his cartoonish yet still disturbing take on horror written all over it. The director of the excellent documentary VIDEOHAVEN, Alex Ross Perry, really impressed me with the truly nightmarish “Kidprint” segment. It was the most original of the bunch and truly gave me chills. I am going to be on the lookout for this director’s next work. Newcomers R.H. Norman and Micheline Pitt did the final segment “House Haunt” which shows this filmmaker duo really know how to make the bones rattle and the spine tingle, while keeping a maniacal humor about things. Finally, Brian M. Ferguson is responsible for the wraparound. Ferguson has only done a few shorts, but the energy of these “Diet Phantasma” segments really kept the momentum racing forward for the entire film.

V/H/S/HALLOWEEN is a mixed bag. Not the best V/H/S film, but it certainly has its moments. Note to the producers: Oversee a little more. Keep things looking authentic. All the best segments do this, but the series has fallen into the more experimental side in the last few and it takes away from the authenticity. Also, let’s have less segments following the Halloween Haunt riff where it is just a person or persons making their way around corners and moving through rooms only to have various shit jumping out at you. Sure, some of the more effective sequences through the years have followed this format, but there were just too many segments using that as a template this time around. I jumped. I was nauseated. And I was disturbed quite a bit in V/H/S/HALLOWEEN. I’m glad they’re keeping this series going. I just hope there is a bit more oversight on the next one to make it the truest and best found footage it can be.

Once again, feel free to agree, disagree, or how about you play along at home and give me your own picks for your favorite horror movies. It’s October, so let’s talk horror. Come back tomorrow for the next level in the Best in Horror Countdown. Be sure to hit all of the pertinent bells and whistles down below and you’ll never miss a post! Happy Halloween, folks!