Scary Movies: Trick ‘r Treat

Here’s a Halloween-themed horror movie that’s been highly recommended to me by other horror fans a couple times over the years, so I was eager to see it. I think it could be filed under the category of cult classic. It was certainly cleverly done and interesting, and I feel like a second viewing might help me to straighten out in my mind some of the connections, so there’s definite re-watch value. Let’s discuss it a bit and then run it through our rubric to see how it rates.

Like Creepshow, Cat’s Eye, and Tales of Terror, Trick ‘r Treat is an anthology movie, collecting several short stories. However, unlike those movies, where the stories are only vaguely linked, the five stories that make up Trick ‘r Treat all happen on the same evening, with characters starring in one story showing up in the background of others. Indeed, to fully understand each story, you have to pay attention to what happens in the others, sort of a horror version of one of those puzzle movies like Pulp Fiction. That’s why I thought a second viewing might help me out–I’m not sure my first time through I caught all the connections, especially in the early segments when we hadn’t yet met all the characters.

It opens with Emma (played by Anna Paquin) returning home with her husband after a night of Halloween partying. She hates Halloween and wants him to clean up the extensive Halloween decorations in the yard, but he wants to go upstairs and get amorous with her. She tells him to go up and wait in bed while she cleans up. Despite his warning her not to, she blows out a jack o’ lantern even though it’s not yet midnight. After her husband heads up, a hidden creature wraps itself in one of the decorative ghost sheets in the yard and attacks Emma. Her husband has put on a pornographic video and is unable to hear her screams above the moans on the video.

Another story follows four young women who are dressed in costumes and ready to head to a party in the woods, but first they need dates. Three of the young women start flirting aggressively with men, trying to pick up good -looking guys to take with them. The other young lady, Laurie (a reference to Laurie Strode in Halloween?), is shyer than the others and not sure they she can go up to a boy. She stays behind while the others take their guys. However, a man comes up to Laurie, dressed in a vampire costume, who we saw killing a woman in an alley in an earlier segment. Laurie accepts his company and follows her friends out to the woods. The man comes on to Laurie, but it turns out she and her friends are a little…umm, hungrier than their dates expected.

I think my favorite of the stories is the one about a group of nerdy high school kids led by a mean girl named Macy. Macy and the group go to the house of an autistic girl, Rhonda, who they invite to come with them on a Halloween adventure. Macy takes them to an old quarry where supposedly a bus of mentally challenged kids fell over the edge and all the children drowned. The legend is that their parents bribed the bus driver to do it and they want revenge. Macy divides her kids into groups of two and they descend a rickety elevator, two at a time, to the bottom of the quarry. Rhonda is separated from her partner and runs into children dressed like the deceased children from the bus. She runs away screaming, truly frightened, only to learn it was just other teenagers dressed up to scare her as a prank. Macy kicks a jack o’ lantern into the water in the quarry, waking up the actual deceased kids, who rise up and chase them. Rhonda makes it to the elevator first and takes it back up to the surface without waiting for the others, waving at them when they show up, leaving them to be attack gruesomely by the zombie mentally challenged kids.

I won’t say how the movie ends up, except to say that by the end you understand the connections among all five segments, and realize that the commonality is that the characters who’ve somehow disrespected Halloween (blowing out or destroying jack o’ lanterns before midnight, not wearing costumes, etc.) are the ones who meet bad ends.

Trick ‘r Treat (2007)
Story/Plot/Characters— An immensely clever script, pretty decent acting, and it all ties together in the end. And yet, because of the anthology format, and because the movie’s so busy being clever, we don’t really get to know or sympathize with any of the characters. Also, it’s all very well done, so you can almost overlook the fact that none of the segments is really all that original–except to an extent the bus of dead kids one, which was my favorite–all the creativity is in the format, rather than the stories themselves. (2.5 points)
Special Effects— Pretty awesome special effects, not extremely gory but there’s no lack of blood. (2 points)
Scariness— There are some frightening moments, but the anthology format and the cleverness of the plot connections actually undermine the scariness as it doesn’t allow a lot of time for tension to build and you’re too busy thinking about how it all fits together. (1 point)
Atmosphere/Freakiness— Great atmospheric setting in the woods, suburbs, and quarries of fictional Warren Valley, Ohio. This is a town that appears normal but where, at least for one night, murder, mayhem and freakiness may lurk behind any tree, in any basement, and behind any mask. Your school principal may turn out to be a serial killer, the quiet autistic girl might be ready to take sweet revenge on her tormenters, and those who don’t respect the rules of Halloween can expect to be gruesomely punished. (2 points)
Total=7.5 points (Excellent)

An overall satisfying anthology horror whose cleverness works both for it, as it’s certainly one of the more involving horror movies I’ve seen, but also against it, as it’s so clever it doesn’t have time or interest in building up suspense or making us sympathize with any of the characters.