Halloween Horrorfest: Trick 'r Treat

Out of all the various horror films that take place on Halloween Night, I don't think I have seen one that had quite captured the spirit of the holiday quite as well as Trick 'r Treat has. Telling four interconnected tales that take place over one Halloween Night in a small mid-west town. All the way through we have Sam, a child sized, burlap masked spirit of Halloween wandering throughout each tale.   

The four tales have an assorted cast of characters, with the school prinicpal Steven Wilkins (played by Dylan Baker), who has some dark secrets of his own contending with a vandalizing juvenile delinquent, Charlie (played by Brett Kelly) as well as his own son. We have four young women, Laurie (played by Anna Paquin), Danielle (played by Lauren Lee Smith), Maria (played by Rochelle Aytes), and Janet (played by Moneca Delain) trying to score dates for a Halloween Party out in the woods later that night. Then there are group a kids, Macy (played by Britt McKillip), Schrader, Sara, and Chip, who are planning on playing a prank on another girl, a savant named Rhonda (played by Samm Todd) at the local rock quarry, the sight of a horrible school bus accident. There is also an angry, lonely old man named Kreeg (played by Brian Cox) and a bickering young married couple (played by Leslie Bibb and Tahmoh Penikett) who are quite ready for Halloween to be over. Over the course of the night, each group of characters will encounter assorted ghosts, ghouls, and assorted other monsters as the legends of Halloween prove to be all too true.

While this film is clearly owes a debt to the anthology horror films that came before it, especially Creepshow, it also has it's own cool vibe as characters from each tale make their way through each of the other ones in addition to their own. The timeline is also gloriously non-linear, with the first tale of the film taking place at the end of the evening and the last tale taking place towards the beginning, with segments mixing with one another such as in one story a character is banging on a window for help only to be ignored and then later in the film, when we get to their story we see what is happening to them. Michael Dougherty both wrote and directed the film and finds clever ways to work in the old myths of Halloween, the history of the jack o'lantern and the urban legends such as tainted candy into something new and fresh. He crafts each tale wonderfully, with surprise twists to each one that I honestly never saw coming, filled with both gothic horror and tongue in cheek humor. Unlike some other films that take place on the holiday, this film perfectly captures the cold, eerie autumn night, with leaves on the ground and a chill in the air.

Overall, Trick 'r Treat is perfect Halloween Night viewing, with a mix of fun and fear that is hard to resist, all overseen by the surprisingly adorable (if also occasionally lethal) Sam.