Trick r Treat Review
Written by: LoudLon
It sounded appealing: a horror anthology based around the preferred Holiday of horror film geeks the world over, Halloween. And Lord knows there aren't many really good horror anthology films out there. Creepshow, Vault of Horrors, maybe one or two more, but that's about it. So when I first heard of this flick last year -- a horror anthology featuring some of my favorite character actors (Brian Cox, Dylan Baker, Anna Paquin) -- to say I was looking forward to it would be an understatement.
Sadly, I was disappointed. For more reasons than one.
Firstly, the stories themselves. Particularly irritating to me was the storyline featuring Dylan Baker (that's Dr. Connors from the Spider-Man movies, and the husband in the indie zombie comedy Fido). It starts off interestingly enough, as we discover Baker is a child murderer and learn even his young son is in on the action. Yet after that revelation, his son disappears from the film with no reason or explanation. Then we discover Baker, on the same night he spends hours killing and burying a child, is also out stalking the streets in a vampire costume with a set of lethal fake fangs. AND, we find him crossing paths with a set of college-chick werewolves. Not even taking into consideration the film's Tarantino-esque, nonlinear presentation, I want to know how the hell was Baker able to be in no less than two places at once?
Equally frustrating was the storyline featuring Brian Cox as an Ebenezer Scrooge-like Halloween curmudgeon stalked by a midget-sized stitch doll creature which also happens to stroll through the other stories. Of all the storylines in the film, this one had the most potential (imagine the Zuni doll episode in Trilogy of Terror). But rather than play this episode for all the suspense it's worth, the filmmaker decided instead to tie it in with another storyline (see next paragraph) and clips its wings with a predictable "twist" which, after being hinted at no less than twice during the course of the film, comes as no surprise whatsoever.
The most solid storyline features a group of kids who traverse to a location where a bus-full of "special" children were drowned years ago. Upon finding the location, they're terrorized by the ghosts of the deceased children. But this story is predictable and, ultimately, open-ended in that the one surviving child is never seen or heard from again. Seeing as how the film seems focused on following its main characters to various times and locations, it seems odd not to do the same with this surviving character. And that the ghosts choose this particular Halloween as the one where they seek their vengeance against the bus driver who drowned them is a puzzler, particularly since they've had at least twenty or thirty Halloweens since it happened to get their kill on.
The remaining storyline deals with Anna Paquin, dressed as Little Red Riding Hood, making her way through the woods on her way to a party with her sorority sisters. I won't even bother going into detail, other than to say that I've seen better punchline set ups executed by grade-schoolers involving a chicken crossing a road.
Being an anthology, there's also a bookend sequence -- that is, a brief storyline which both starts and finishes the film. And though it features Leslie Bibb -- who, despite being a dead ringer for an ex-girlfriend I despise, is nevertheless an actress I enjoy watching -- it's bland, feels forced and is ultimately forgettable.
The very few things the film has going for it are its excellent cinematography, its impressive cast, a good amount of FX and that admittedly creepy stitch-doll creature. Unfortunately for this flick, however, I like my movies with at least a nominal amount of substance. If all I wanted was to look at something pretty, I'd google Famke Janssen.
Brass tacks: if you've got an hour and a half to waste, I suppose you could do worse. But then, you could also do a whole lot better.