Nerdly » HorRHIFFic 2025: ‘Halloween Tales’ Review

04th Mar2025

HorRHIFFic 2025: ‘Halloween Tales’ Review

by Phil Wheat

Stars: Macarena Gómez, Mario Mayo, Javier Botet, Christian Thomas, David Pareja, Lucía de la Fuente, Carmen del Rosal, Zorion Eguileor | Written and Directed by Kiko Prada

Sometimes when you watch a film you know it’s right up your street from the get-go and that was certainly the case for Halloween Tales. Opening with credits that look like they jumped out of an 80s Italian horror, with a soundtrack that sounds like a homage to John Carpenter, I was hooked immediately.

Halloween Tales, also known under its original title Historias de Halloween, is a horror anthology from Spain that is obviously influenced by the likes of US productions like Creephow (the film uses comics as a framing device like that King-inspired anthology) and, obviously, The Twilight Zone, but – like many Spanish genre fare, also the work of Chicho Ibáñez Serrador (The House That Screamed, Who Can Kill a Child?).

The wraparound follows Luis (Christian Thomas), a boy whose mother, on Halloween night, encourages him to go trick-or-treating instead of staying home playing video games. During his trick-or-treating, Luis discovers an old antique shop run by Ander (Javier Botet). There, through different comics, Ander reveals terrifying stories that unveil the hidden secrets of the mysterious store.

The first story sees a lone traveller, Mario (David Pareja) use a couch-surfing app to find accommodation to stay at as he travels the country. Unfortunately, his latest stay doesn’t go according to plan as he shares the home with three women who proceed to get him drunk and high, before taking him out into the woods to seduce him. Of course, we know something’s not right – the is a horror story after all – but Mario is so enthralled by the trio that he goes along with everything, thinking he’s in for a good time. Big mistake.

Story two, The Deal, is a rather meta affair that deals with horror make-up effects and the people who create them, proving that there can be just as much horror behind the camera… It follows an SFX-loving young woman, Edurne (Lucía de la Fuente) who runs a YouTube channel showing people how to create effects for their own films. Knowing her fascination with SFX, Edurne’s friend Aroa (Carmen del Rosal) manages to bag a meeting with effects legend Carlos Jones (Zorion Eguileor), who ultimately invites Edurne to help him finish his last piece of work – a sculpture of Julie Christie from Doctor Zhivago. However, Carlos isn’t really the friendly old man he seems and Edurne will soon realise how apt the idiom “Never meet your heroes” really can be!

The third and final story is The Inheritance, which tells the story of nurse Maite (Aida Folch) who, following losing her job after the pandemic, gets a job as an in-home geriatric nursing assistant taking care of grumpy old woman Lola (María Barranco). Obviously being unemployed for so long means Maite is trapped for cash, so when she finds legal documents regarding a massive inheritance of money, investments, homes, and priceless art she decides to play thief. Only Lola isn’t as frail as she makes out and she’s more than a little paranoid about being taken advantage of but Lola needn’t worry. Her inheritance is well-protected and those who try to take it will, like Maite, find themselves taken.

Things wrap up with a return to the wraparound tale, The Store” as Luis explores Ander’s strange antique store, finding a hidden door behind an arcade cabinet. A door that leads to a labyrinth of corridors and a door marked “Caution: Mamurraks” – who Luis discovers are child-like goblin-esque creatures who escape and run riot around Ander’s store, eating sofas and ransacking the shelves. But the Mamurrak’s aren’t what they seem – you see Ander can’t have anyone find out about his comics or his store and Luis knows and he did the one thing you shouldn’t. He took a gift, a stick of liquorice, from the Mamurrak’s.

Blending a myriad of themes – witchcraft, psychopaths, zombies, and even a touch of Ghoulies and Ghostbusters in the wraparound tale – Halloween Tales is one of the best horror anthologies I think I’ve seen since 2015’s Tales of Halloween. From the cinematography to the performances to the actual stories themselves and the [expected] twists hidden within, everything about Kiko Prada’s film works and it works really, REALLY, well.

Like Creepshow – the pinnacle of comic-based horror anthology movies for me – despite all three (four counting the wraparound) stories being totally different, they all somehow feel connected as one. There are no jarring segments like you find in other modern anthology films. Maybe it’s because all the stories come from Prada rather than a bevvy of filmmakers and writers, which means it’s his singular vision – he controls the visuals and controls the narratives – making the entire thing feel like one cohesive ‘whole’. We need more anthologies like this!