Trick 'r Treat (2007) Review

Trick 'r Treat (2007) Review

 

Happy Halloween!

Trick 'r Treat is the greatest movie about Halloween ever made. The first time I heard about it, though, the idea that it might potentially be just good never even crossed my mind. I expected it to be bad. After being screened at some festivals it was supposed to be released to theaters in 2007, but was delayed and eventually dumped unceremoniously on home video with little fanfare. I thought the trailer made it look like a terrible direct-to-video production. Warner Bros. did an abysmal job of marketing the film for what it really is: a blend of comedy and horror and everything that makes Halloween special.

In addition to that bad trailer and hearing no one talk about it in a positive light for years, it had another thing going against it for me to be interested: it’s an anthology film, a format that I’m not always a huge fan of when it comes to movies, but for it to live up to the handful of greatest horror anthologies, like Tales From the Crypt, Creepshow, and Tales From the Darkside: The Movie, it had to be something truly special. Well, it is, because it doesn’t follow the usual anthology formula of having isolated stories, all the stories take place on the same Halloween night in the same small town of Warren Valley, Ohio. Certain characters appear in multiple stories and we see repeated moments or events from different perspectives, but one thing that links them all together is Sam. When you think of Christmas, what character do you think of first? Probably Santa Clause, but there are so many others, too, like Rudolph and Frosty and even Buddy the Elf. What about Easter? The Easter Bunny, obviously. St. Patricks Day? The Leprechaun. But then there’s Halloween, which has had many fictional characters associated with the tradition, but never one singular character to represent it, until Sam came along.

You might be thinking, what about Michael Myers from the movie that bears the name Halloween? That’s a well-established franchise that’s been around for decades, isn’t he the more likely candidate to be Halloween’s mascot? I contest that Halloween is a very important film in the slasher subgenre, but it is not the definitive movie about the Halloween season. Sure, it has plenty of things that represent October 31^st, like dressing up, carving jack-o-lanterns, and watching scary movies, but it’s also a story about babysitters who are attacked by a killer, and that is the reason it’s been copied and emulated over and over, because the premise is not integral to being set during Halloween. Back to Trick 'r Treat, the very premise is inextricably linked to Halloween, and Sam is a supernatural entity that keeps the traditions in check. His appearance captures that blend of cute-but-scary you get when a little kid is dressed up in a costume, and what’s under that burlap mask cements his status as the Halloween mascot, which pop culture has slowly adopted over the years since Trick 'r Treat has become more well-known by Halloween lovers.

Because of the nature of its anthology format and its relative obscurity for mainstream viewers, I won’t divulge too many of the plot details, but I’ll explain the individual stories and some of the characters involved. It begins with a married couple returning from a night of partying and establishes the woman is not a fan of Hallows Eve, so you can guess how she ends up. The opening credits are depicted in a comic book style, which makes the character Sam feel like he’s been around for longer than just this movie. He actually spawned from writer/director Michael Dougherty’s short film Season’s Greetings that he made a decade before Trick 'r Treat. The next story follows a fat kid who ends up on the doorstep of Principal Wilkins, and you would think a school principal wouldn’t be the worst guy to be out and about on this Halloween night, but think again! He takes Halloween traditions pretty seriously, which could spell doom for the fat kid, as well as his incredibly annoying son.

The next story follows a group of kids who are trick-or-treating and collecting jack-o’-lanterns, and they end up in the company of Rhonda, a strange young girl who also takes Halloween very seriously, but not in the same way as Wilkins. They recall the urban legend of the Halloween School Bus Massacre and visit the spot where it happened to get a really good scare—maybe too good of a scare. The story that follows is probably the most surprising one, so I won’t say much about it other than it’s about a young woman named Laurie and her friends getting costumes and going out to a party in the woods, and someone or something is following her. The final story gives Sam the spotlight, when he visits the neighbour of Wilkins, old man Kreeg, because Kreeg hates Halloween, so it’s like a dark twist on A Christmas Carol. The final conclusion ties up some loose ends and brings it all home for a final scare that’s almost funny because of how clever it is, but it is also genuinely freaky.

My favourite parts of Trick 'r Treat are the twists you don’t really see coming that reveal unexpected connections between the stories and characters. Even though I know them all now having seen the movie so many times, I still find it entertaining when I watch it again, just because they are so well done. I think Michael Dougherty is a great writer and director, and I stand by my opinion that he was a great choice to make the 2014 Godzilla sequel Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), but I also think he has not made anything else as great as Trick 'r Treat.  It is less than 90 minutes, making it all killer no filler, and is wholly satisfying in a way no other anthology horror film I’ve seen has managed to be. One thing I always end up commenting on it seems in movie reviews is the pacing, and I have to mention it once again, because I think Trick 'r Treat is paced wonderfully. It isn’t rushed nor is it too slow, it has fast-paced scares and slow suspenseful scenes. The whole thing is like a smorgasbord of horror movie delights, and the music is simple but perfect for setting the right mood and tone all the way through.

It might not sound like the kind of movie that would attract big stars, but there are actually a few really good actors in the cast, such as Dylan Baker as Wilkins, Anna Paquin as Laurie, and Brian Cox as old man Kreeg. I love that Cox has played serious roles like in Succession and the Bourne films but he can also be in silly movies like Super Troopers and superhero movies like X-Men. He is great as always, and even though there are a few child actors who are a bit meh, no one stands out as giving a bad performance, and the characters all range from likeable to scary to purposefully annoying, and none of them are a disservice to the movie. I really can’t say enough good things about this movie, but unfortunately, I don’t think I can recommend Trick 'r Treat to everyone of all ages, because it does have dark, gruesome, gross-out moments, some blood and guts, coarse language, and violence. That being said, I can’t deny that’s all part of the appeal and the charm. Everyone is entitled to one good scare on Halloween night, and this could be yours. Hopefully even if you aren’t big into scary movies you will give it a chance.

Trick 'r Treat has finally received the attention from horror fans that it so desperately deserved from the very beginning, but now with the passage of time it has become something new: a definitive must-see for the Halloween season in the same way as so many other holiday-centric films over the years. I have watched this movie more times than any other horror movie on Halloween or during the month of October, and it will always be a Halloween tradition for me to sit down to watch it or at least have it on while I carve a pumpkin.

What is Halloween for, really, if not to remind us all that there are things in this world we don’t understand, events we can’t predict, or chance encounters we can’t avoid? Life is as much of a mystery sometimes as death. None of us are getting out of this alive, but sometimes it’s good for us to be confronted with the uncomfortable, the macabre, the disgusting, and the scary, to remind us we’re still human and we can safely explore these undeniable truths through the world of film on the other side of a screen. What better time to do so?

Happy Halloween, everyone, and goodnight.