| Director(s) | Michael Dougherty |
| Principal Cast | Quinn Lord as Sam Dylan Baker as Principal Wilkins Anna Paquin as Laurie Brian Cox as Mr.Kreeg Samm Todd as Rhonda Leslie Bibb as Emma |
| Release Date | 2007 |
| Language(s) | English |
| Running Time | 82 minutes |
Trick R’Treat has been my go-to Halloween movie since I first saw it back in the early periods of high school. Since that first watch through, I’ve seen it once a year every year always on the 1st of October to get myself amped up for the rest of the month. No other movie so perfectly manages to capture the quintessential aspects of Halloween while telling them in a way that makes full use of every trick or treat in the book. This is a movie that’s simultaneously heartwarming, hilarious, and horrifying all while staying true to the spirit of the holiday.
This is majorly due to the ingenious script and direction by Michael Dougherty, who somehow managed to create an anthology movie that makes full use of all its parts and sub-stories to create a one-of-a-kind narrative that constantly keeps you on your toes. That’s right – this is an anthology movie that actually works as a cohesive narrative despite lacking any “real protagonist”. The movie starts off with a small instructional video tape that quickly warns its supposed audience to follow the rules of the Halloween before cutting to the “real” story.
It’s a short and quick reminder to the audience – the rules are important and the rules determine everything. The rest of the movie is just a warning for those foolish enough to not heed the easy-to-follow instructions, which thankfully for the audience, happens to be the majority of the characters we follow.
The first sub-plot in the movie makes it clear that the penalty for not following rules is death before cleverly using a match-cut from the mangled corpse to a comic book strip depicting the events up till then.
The transition is effective not only because of how seamless it feels but because of what it reveals of the story to come – a seemingly disconnected series of events whose relation will only become clear as time goes on. As this comic montage plays out, key clues are given for each of the sub-plots to come. It’s intriguing as a first-time viewer, but it also demonstrates just how much planning went into planning each storyline to multiple-time viewers. The invocation of the transmedia narrative seeps into these early moments of Trick R’Treat and gives the piece a distinctive flair.
Every single detail from the miniscule background characters to random noises gets explored as different seemingly unrelated storylines intersect with one another. What seems to be an innocuous clearly turns out to be lethal, while what seems to be deadly turned out to be nothing to worry about. By making constant reference to and use of both horror cliches and the customs of Halloween, the movie manages to constantly subvert audience expectations in ways that feel earned and clever. Never once did I see a reveal in the movie and think it came out of nowhere. The more I watch the movie, the more I realize just how many breadcrumbs Doughtery leaves the audience to piece together some of the nastier reveals before they actually happen. The movie is told more poetically than it is linearly but the way the timeline is revealed and explored both internally makes sense and externally leads to the biggest “Eureka” moments. The moment you think you’ve got the twist another one completely flips what you thought on its head and it’s genuinely delightful watching it all come together.
What keeps all the incongruous elements in harmony with each other is the protagonist-of-sorts, Sam (short for Samhain- very clever). The child like creature with the dopy straw mask doesn’t seem like a lot, but the moment someone breaks a rule of the holiday you’ll understand that just because it looks cute doesn’t mean it won’t murder you in the most horrifying way possible. The way the movie uses dissolve transitions between jack-o-lanterns or the blood red moon back and to Sam augment his presence as omnipotent and omnipresent.
He literally is the spirit of Halloween watching over all and ensuring that the customs are being followed. The best part of his characterization is the balance struck between making him a terror and childlike. You’ll go from smiling at his presence to going “Oh God, that’s why you don’t break the rules.” Never once does he feel malicious and the movie exemplifies this with some key moments during the climax. It’s the reason why Sam has endured so long as a symbol of the holiday (and why I so badly want a sequel by Dougherty to come out). He’s just one of the best horror characters to come out this side of the 21st century.
On a technical level – the movie knocks all the gory details out of the park. There’s plenty of blood, dismemberment, supernatural creatures, and a healthy amount of bodily fluids to go around. You like a good dead body display? Got it. Want to see some supernatural shenanigans with body parts moving around by themselves? Also, here. Need to see some monster transformations? Why didn’t you say so sooner? The way the effects all come together make the movie feel like horror movie grab bag of fun effects and neat executions – all of which are just as much fun to see as the ones coming before and after them. There’s not a single scene of violence which isn’t fun to watch, not only because the characters have it “coming to them” for breaking the rules, but because the movie gives us more than enough reason to actively want these characters to suffer. The best part? Outside of an early scene involving a lot of vomit, no scene feels gratuitous to the point of feeling like torture porn. Nor does any scene feel like it pulls its punches. It all just works right.
If I had an issue with the movie, it’s that all the separate sub-plots fit a bit too neatly into one another. It seems like a nitpick, and at some level it is, but as characters and story events are brought to light they come off feeling more like ways to tie everything together than organic revelations. It’s at these moments that I wish the movie pushed more heavily into the transmedia elements set up at the start of the movie, because the constant reference back to each story being a story in a graphic novel series of sorts would add some additional cohesion. If more bits and pieces of characters’ backstories were revealed in these moments, then the later reveals would feel earned and clever as opposed to just the latter. Is this a huge issue? Not at all. Honestly, the fact that all these elements fit together is proof enough of the talent that went into both the script and the editing process. Someone who said these criticisms are a non-issue wouldn’t get any protest from me, because there’s still no movie out there that better encapsulates the spirits and traditions of Halloween.
REPORT CARD
| TLDR | If you’re looking for a fun movie to get your Halloween started look no further. Trick R’ Treat is every Halloween fan’s nightmare come to life. From the immaculate narrative construction to the transmedia presentation this is a movie that should delight casual fans while giving horror fans more than enough to sink their teeth into. If you haven’t seen the movie go ahead and give it a watch. If you’ve already seen it and didn’t think it was for you, give it another whirl and look at the way all the plots are set-up to build into/lead into one another. Who knows? You might find something you missed out on before. |
| Rating | 9.6/10 |
| Grade | A+ |
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