I have mentioned a few times in the past that I have this large poster in my office, labeled 1,500 “Must See” movies. I question the judgement of some of those picks. However, I have been working to fill in many of those bubbles. One section of the poster that I hadn’t been able to check anything off on was, oddly enough, “horror anthologies”. But when HBO Max dropped a bunch more movies leaving at the end of the month, one of them was a horror anthology from the poster, an 82 minute movie called Trick ‘r Treat that at least looked kinda cool.
I mean, sure, I watched a Halloween-themed movie around Christmas-time, but sometimes you gotta mix things up.
Told in a non-linear manner, the basic idea is that on Halloween in the town of Warren Valley, Ohio, there’s a small entity of some kind in the form of what looks like a little boy in some kind of scarecrow costume with a mask covering its giant head. His name is Sam, and in a pre-credits scene, he kills a woman for blowing out her jack-o-lanterns before Halloween night is over. Much of this seems to be implied, but it’s that sort of movie, going off atmosphere more than anything else. The stories don’t have titles or anything and sometimes overlap.
As it is, the stories told are about a school principal (Dylan Baker) who kills an overweight boy and has problems disposing of the body, a group of kids taking an autistic girl down to the site of a famous bus crash from decades earlier with a story about dead kids from the self-same bus, a young woman dressed like Little Red Riding Hood (Anna Paquin) looking to find a date for a festive time in the woods with her more sexually experienced friends and finding a serial killer, and finally, a cranky old man (the great Brian Cox) doesn’t want to give out treats to the costumed children who come to his door, only to get a visit from Sam.
All this is…fine. The movie itself isn’t afraid to kill children, and arguably all the victims at least partially deserve what happens to them. Respect Halloween, and at least Sam will leave you alone. Maybe don’t go out into the woods with the girls from out of town. The script, at least, ties into itself very well, predicting a few future plot points with minor bits of dialogue, and the credits for the movie seem to be set up as a comic book style–there was a tie-in book that got delayed as did the movie itself–and the general look of the movie does somewhat evoke a comic book.
But really, this movie was rather average. The best story on the whole was the last one. Sam,, at least, is a somewhat memorable movie monster. Once unmasked, he’s kinda creepy and somehow holiday-appropriate. His story does tend to heighten the more cartoonish aspects of the movie. But really, Sam and a few impressive actors aside, this one is rather so-so. Once again, I have no idea what that poster listed something as a “must see”.
Grade: C+
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