In addition to the usual reviews and comments you would find on a horror movie blog, this is also a document of the wonderfully vast horror movie section of the video store I worked at in my youth.

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Halloween Tales Long Overdue


The final film to round out my amazing trip to Montreal was fittingly a little title you may have heard of called Trick ‘r Treat. If you’ve spent anytime visiting horror websites over the last three years, you no doubt know of this shelved anthology flick. It is a movie that has been awaiting a release for what seems like forever – only John Levine’s All The Boys Love Mandy Lane can declare it has been waiting longer to see the light of day. Well, it seems that Trick ‘r Treat is finally getting some play. As I said, it showed at Fantasia last week, but it will also screen at Toronto After Dark this month and hopefully release on DVD this Halloween.


Four intertwined stories about all manner of things that go bump in the night unfold in a sleepy Ohio town on Halloween night.

I’ve stated before that I love anthologies and Trick 'r Treat is a perfect example of what makes them so appealing to me. Director Michael Dougherty orchestrates a quartet of stories while maintaining a clever thread throughout. A horror anthology usually employs some sort of wraparound or narrator, but Trick ‘r Treat takes this one step further by – in addition to some animated Creepshow-inspired transitions – staging all its stories in the same town on the same night. Characters from each of the four stories weave in and out of each other and events are seen from different perspectives. The real strength of Trick ‘r Treat is how it plays with convention. Some things are easier to spot than others, but I guarantee that you will be ‘tricked’ at least once. The ensemble cast here is solid, as well. Going beyond the always sexy Anna Paquin, there are several other familiar faces like Dylan Baker, Leslie Bibb, Brian Cox and Tahmoh Penikett. Oh, did I mention Anna Paquin appears in a Little Red Riding Hood costume?


I think it is goes without saying that Trick ‘r Treat deserved a wide theatrical release. I understand that some of the subject matter might not have sat well with the studio/censors, but guess what? It’s time to fucking grow up! After seeing some of the shit slung into theatres instead, I implore them to look themselves in the mirror and say they made a good decision here.

You shit the bed! Bad studio!!!


I really don’t have a negative thing to say about Trick ‘r Treat, but I still can’t say it rocked my world either. I suppose it's possible that I may have been expecting too much by having had to wait so long to see it, but there is no question that Trick ‘r Treat delivers the goodies.

3 comments:

Matt said...

I too am really excited for this to come out. The way this movie was treated by the studio was dreadful.

AllHallowSteve said...

Hey Jay!

Glad you got to see it but sorry you weren't more enthralled with it.

This has been my fear all along, that those who saw it early would over-hype Trick r Treat so that when it finally did come out people would wonder what all the fuss was about.

It's just a fun film that nods often to the anthologies like Creepshow and really embraces the Halloween holiday spirit visually and thematically.

I know I'm going to add it to my "must watch"es every October.

Jay Clarke said...

Don't get me wrong Steve, TRT was great, the problem was more mine than the movie's, I'm sure you will find it well worth the wait.