“Happy Halloween!” “Screw you!”
After a flood of horror anthologies in the ‘80s and early ‘90s (Creepshow and its sequel, Twilight Zone: The Movie, Cat’s Eye, Tales from the Darkside, Nightmares, John Carpenter’s Body Bags), the tide trickled to almost nothing in the mid-‘90s through the early aughts (I suppose there was Tales from the Hood, but nobody looks back on that one with fondness). The genre has shown signs of life as of late, however. The past few years have brought us Chillerama, The ABC’s of Death, V/H/S and its sequel, and one could make the case for I Sell the Dead being an anthology. Unfortunately, none of those films can lay claim to living up to the reputation of Creepshow, and certainly not of the best the ‘60s and ‘70s could offer up, such as Twice-Told Tales or The House that Dripped Blood. In fact, Chillerama and V/H/S are downright execrable, and The ABC’s of Death was a mixed bag, at best. Let us praise Trick ‘r Treat for being a minor miracle, then. It’s not an unalloyed triumph, but it hits most of the right notes, captures the spirit of the holiday, contains varied storylines, and all its segments entwine together in a cobweb of connections. If there’s a fault to be found with it, it’s one of inconsistent tone; unsure of whether to go for all-out laughs or genuine horror, Trick ‘r Treat presents a blend that at times doesn’t push far enough in either direction. It’s a wonderfully cast film, with Dylan Baker, Brian Cox, and Anna Paquin all turning in fine performances. Baker’s segment in particular, concerning a murderous school principal, is a black humor-laden delight that largely rests on his shoulders, the only blemish I can find with it being that some of the tension-filled moments are clearly artificially inserted for a “Will he?” moment, and work not at all upon repeat viewings. (I’m still bummed we’ll never get to see Baker, as the Lizard, face off against Spider-man.) Paquin’s story is slow in the going, and the jokes here fall particularly flat (you won’t even get most of them until a second viewing, to boot), but the payoff is quite worth it. That said, even when the story drags, the film never looks less than splendid, cast in rich orange hues and shades of black. It’s not exactly a very filmic-looking piece of work (the middle segment in particular looks and feels like a particularly nasty episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark?), but works nonetheless. Unceremoniously dumped straight to video by a studio who didn’t know what they had, the film seems to have happily developed its own little cult in the subsequent years. More of this, please.
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