Trick r' Treat (2007)
Starring: Dylan Baker, Anna Paquin, Brian Cox, Rochelle Aytes, Leslie Bibb
Category: New classic, favorite
Plot Tags: anthology, holiday
Original release: December 2007*
Format viewed: DVD - own collection
Directed by: Michael Dougherty
Written by: Michael Dougherty
Produced by : Bryan Singer
Distributed by: Warner Brothers*
Okay, so first things first, the (*) marks above and what they mean (at least to me). This film is one of many that got made and a bunch of lame-ass marketing people and a bunch of lame-ass studio types didn't know what to do with it. I base this on many accounts I've read about the production and subsequent shelving of the movie after it was made. The bottom line, as near as I can figure it, is that it wasn't an out and out comedy (because of the inherent meanness and dark humor) and it wasn't and out and out horror film (I guess if you know nothing of the genre' you'd think that) so they were unsure about how to position it. So there it sat, seeing only a handful of screenings from the tail end of 2007 into 2008 and 2009 and when I got my hands on it finally in October 2009, it took a couple weeks of tracking it down and ultimately got a copy entirely by accident. They printed some criminally small amount of copies at the time which meant Amazon couldn't ship it and no retailers even had much of a record of having one or two or not. I finally found it at a Best Buy way way north of where I live and even then it was mislabeled. Since that time, they've upped the print runs considerably and you can find it pretty much anywhere but at that time, it was a massive chore. Course, you could find enough copies of the terrible Halloween remake, the Amityville remake and 10,000 other remakes at the time to repanel your house if you were so inclined. Sigh. Okay, so the reason I'm writing all of this is that Trick r' Treat is an absolutely wonderful love letter to the whole mythos of Halloween, the traditions, the urban legends and all the rituals that surround it. It is a little freaky, a lot joyfully mean spirited and all together a hoot and deserved no part of the screw job the distributors put on it.
Basically the story centers around four (maybe five) stories that intertwine over the course of one Halloween evening in a small town. One story is about the school principal (the great Dylan Baker - Thirteen Days, Road to Perdition) who seems to have a bent towards thinning the local herds and developing the family business. Another story involves a group of middle school ( I think) children who decide to play a prank on an autistic girl at their school by bringing her to the rock quarry and, after she tells the story of the bus driver who drove a bus full of developmentally disabled children into the quarry on purpose to ease their parents' burden, don zombie costumes and scare the crap out of her. Things develop beyond the prank and, well, goes a different way. Another story surrounds a tentative girl in her early 20s (Anna Paquin) who is being drug around by her sister and her friends to pick up men for a party. She is very unsure about this and it being her first time, regardless of the chiding of her sisters' friends. After the other three girls find dates, Laurie decides to stay behind and comes face to face with a hooded, masked guy who we've just seen is up to a whole lot more than just innocent fun and instead seems to be a bloodthirsty creature of the night. This changes a bit, after Laurie wanders into the forest and the party comes into greater focus. The last actual story surrounds a mean old man (Brian Cox) who is bothered and annoyed by neighborhood children who is forced to come face to face with the true spirit of Halloween in the form of a now familiar face, a little boy in a sack head costume who is a whole lot more than that. This little boy plays an integral part from the onset of the film and is a constant reminder of the true spirit of Halloween.
So I am leaving out a lot in terms of what happens in each of these stories and the twists and turns of them because that is part of the great charm and fun of the film. Nothing is groundbreaking in terms of plot twists but the way that each story resolves itself and the way they overlap is very clever and ultimately very interesting to see how it continues on. This isn't a film for everyone, as it is a bit bloody at times and the fates of many of the characters can be somewhat unpleasant but on the whole it is entirely appropriate for yearly Halloween viewing and it is a film I've definitely grown to love on each subsequent viewing.
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