Mike LoManaco
10-28-2009, 08:29 AM
http://thehdroom.com/images/bluray/large/5048.jpg
Studio Name: Warner Premiere/Legendary Pictures
MPAA Rating: R
Disc/Transfer Information: 1080p High Definition; 16X9 2.4:1 (2.40:1)
Tested Audio Track: English Dolby TrueHD 5.1
Director: Michael Dougherty
Starring Cast: Anna Paquin, Brian Cox
LoMANACO'S PLOT ANALYSIS:
This is my absolute favorite time of year. There’s something just so damn spine-tingling about the crisp autumn air, falling orange leaves and that sense that fall has arrived and Halloween is just around the corner. While horror films have come and gone through this season over decades Hollywood has churned them out, it’s always refreshing when a new one comes along that really sums up the experience of Halloween – I can recall seeing John Carpenter’s Vampires in theaters when it debuted the night before Halloween 1998, and I never miss a viewing of Carpenter’s Halloween each and every year. But Michael Dougherty and Bryan Singer (of Superman Returns), in creating the tongue-in-cheek Trick ‘r Treat, attempted to thoroughly summarize what the whole holiday and custom is truly all about. It was a nice attempt, and it’s the first film in a very long while to wholeheartedly concentrate on Halloween itself, and all the downright creepy things that could, and do, happen on that night – even going into a plot based on mythology and Celtic legend. We’ll get to that.
First and foremost, Dougherty and Singer tapped the formula exhibited in films such as Creepshow, Tales From the Hood/Tales From the Crypt and Stephen King’s Cats Eye and spun four interwoven tales happening concurrently with each other and eventually flashing back to earlier events; the effect has been applied successfully before as those are all creepy, chilling horror tales in their own right. But what ties these stories together, always, are stories of ultimate revenge – remember when Ted Danson drowns on a beach in Creepshow and Leslie Nielsen is eventually stalked by Danson’s corpse? Remember when the racist cops are hunted down by the community leader in Tales From the Hood? And who can forget James Woods in that demented anti-smoking clinic run by the diabolical Alan King in Cats Eye? Here, in Trick ‘r Treat, this theme of revenge on All Hallows Eve runs rampant through different character’s experiences in a small town – we even have the classic comic book page effect throughout the film, a la Creepshow, and it’s most refreshing from a modern day horror story.
How do the stories interweave? Well, unlike Creepshow and the other aforementioned films that take this approach of multiple stories in one film, Trick ‘r Treat doesn’t introduce separate stories to make up one motion picture – the stories all correspond with one another and flow without interruption. For example, the film opens with a couple walking down the street on Halloween eve, and when they approach their house, they remove their costumes and flirt with one another, discussing taking down the decorations in their yard. The cute blonde (Leslie Bibb) teases her man with a ridiculously shapely behind in tight sweatpants, while he retreats into the house to watch a porno. As she is taking down the decorations in the yard, she’s brutally assaulted as some trick or treaters watch and then run in terror…her man eventually wakes up to come downstairs and outside to find her bloody remains and her head on a…well, I won’t give that one away. From there, the opening “comic book” sequence introduces us to other characters in the interwoven story, including a school principal (played by Spider-Man’s Dylan Baker) who catches a fat kid in the neighborhood knocking over jack o’ lanterns and stealing candy, and whom he exacts revenge on for doing these things by feeding him poisoned candy. Baker’s character’s motivation is cemented in his diehard beliefs in and respect for the Halloween tradition – once the fat kid is out of the way in a disgusting display including a chocolate sauce vomiting spree, Baker attempts to bury the kid in his backyard, where apparently, this principal has been collecting other bodies as he masquerades as a serial killer in this small town. Next door, he’s yelled at by his creepy old neighbor played by Red Eye’s Brian Cox, for making so much noise and causing his dog to bark at the fence separating their property.
Meanwhile, a group of sexy young girls are preparing to dress up in costume for a party, and we’re treated to teasingly provocative conversation between these ladies in the dressing rooms they’re in, including one smokin’ hot brunette saying to her friends, “my tits are popping out of this,” while another comments, “that’s the point.” Indeed. Amongst the group is a supposed virgin (Anna Paquin) who’s only desire this Halloween night is to !@!!@!^& her brains out with the cutest guy she can find, and her friends are trying to help. They seduce some guys here and there, attempting to get them to be their “dates” for this “party” they’re going to – but all is definitely not what it seems with these chicks. The seduction element of Halloween is explored here, while on another side of town, a group of mean teens gather to exploit and tease a town misfit…which is a typical element in films launched by the classic Carrie. They lure this creepy girl into a nearby mountain area, and the lead girl tells the group a story about a school bus massacre that happened here years ago on Halloween – the film then displays a flashback sequence, depicting “challenged” children on this school bus who are almost killed by the murderous driver who was paid off by the kid’s parents to get rid of them. He drives the bus to the edge of the cliff the teens are now standing on, but one of the kids breaks free from his restraints on the bus as the driver is handing out candy before attempting to kill them, and drives the bus off the cliff himself. According to the teens now standing at the edge of this cliff, years later, the souls of these murdered challenged kids haunt the waters below…and the bus they were on was never found. They begin to play a prank on the girl they brought out to tease by pretending to be the dead spirits of the kids from that bus crash – but they are soon screaming and running themselves from something not of this world…and very much real…
The film goes back and forth between all these scenarios happening at the same time in this town – the principal that dumps bodies in his backyard, the creepy old man attacked by a small hooded figure named “Sam” that turns out to be a Halloween demon, the sexy girls attempting to get their virgin friend laid and the group of teens attempting to conjure up the spirits of the dead school bus kids. There’s a moment when the comic book pages of animation indicate “EARLIER…” on the bottom of the screen, and the events go back a bit so we can see what happened that got all of these characters into the situations they’re in. The most interesting and surprising moment of Trick ‘r Treat comes when Anna Paquin’s virgin character ends up reversing an attack made on her by a guy at this Halloween festival/party that appears to be a real vampire – could that be the principal under all that vampire makeup and the black mask? Was he a real vampire, or was he using fake teeth to bite girls all Halloween night? Better yet, is this virgin and her sexy friends the nice, flirty group of coochies they’re making themselves out to be? You’ll be in for the surprise of your life after watching this sequence of Trick ‘r Treat.
The most disappointing sequence in the film comes when Brian Cox’s old man scrooge character is attacked by some “thing” in his house that torments him on this Halloween night; he opens his door to find dozens of glowing jack o’ lanterns in his front yard, and then he’s assaulted by the small hooded figure that’s been watching over every situation in the film from a distance…this figure, lovingly named “Sam” (for the real name of the Halloween holiday, Samhain), plans on teaching Cox a lesson for his refusal to “respect” Halloween. The whole thing gets campy and ridiculous, with this small costumed thing slicing at Cox’s legs from under his bed, and then coming after him with a broken-off Halloween lollipop; I don’t know what the point of all of this was, but if you listen to Dougherty during one of the main documentaries on the disc, you’ll see how this was a passionate element for him.
The ride was definitely fun, and I am going to watch this a few more times before I have to return this disc to my editor, and I’m probably going to view it on the 31st. Yet, much like Drag Me to Hell, I just don’t know about this one…it was creepy in the style and panache of Creepshow and other “multiple-tales-in-one-film” titles over the years, but something about it just made it very silly at the end of the day. Definitely worth a rental for this week, though.
TRICK 'R TREAT REVIEW CONTINUED BELOW...
Studio Name: Warner Premiere/Legendary Pictures
MPAA Rating: R
Disc/Transfer Information: 1080p High Definition; 16X9 2.4:1 (2.40:1)
Tested Audio Track: English Dolby TrueHD 5.1
Director: Michael Dougherty
Starring Cast: Anna Paquin, Brian Cox
LoMANACO'S PLOT ANALYSIS:
This is my absolute favorite time of year. There’s something just so damn spine-tingling about the crisp autumn air, falling orange leaves and that sense that fall has arrived and Halloween is just around the corner. While horror films have come and gone through this season over decades Hollywood has churned them out, it’s always refreshing when a new one comes along that really sums up the experience of Halloween – I can recall seeing John Carpenter’s Vampires in theaters when it debuted the night before Halloween 1998, and I never miss a viewing of Carpenter’s Halloween each and every year. But Michael Dougherty and Bryan Singer (of Superman Returns), in creating the tongue-in-cheek Trick ‘r Treat, attempted to thoroughly summarize what the whole holiday and custom is truly all about. It was a nice attempt, and it’s the first film in a very long while to wholeheartedly concentrate on Halloween itself, and all the downright creepy things that could, and do, happen on that night – even going into a plot based on mythology and Celtic legend. We’ll get to that.
First and foremost, Dougherty and Singer tapped the formula exhibited in films such as Creepshow, Tales From the Hood/Tales From the Crypt and Stephen King’s Cats Eye and spun four interwoven tales happening concurrently with each other and eventually flashing back to earlier events; the effect has been applied successfully before as those are all creepy, chilling horror tales in their own right. But what ties these stories together, always, are stories of ultimate revenge – remember when Ted Danson drowns on a beach in Creepshow and Leslie Nielsen is eventually stalked by Danson’s corpse? Remember when the racist cops are hunted down by the community leader in Tales From the Hood? And who can forget James Woods in that demented anti-smoking clinic run by the diabolical Alan King in Cats Eye? Here, in Trick ‘r Treat, this theme of revenge on All Hallows Eve runs rampant through different character’s experiences in a small town – we even have the classic comic book page effect throughout the film, a la Creepshow, and it’s most refreshing from a modern day horror story.
How do the stories interweave? Well, unlike Creepshow and the other aforementioned films that take this approach of multiple stories in one film, Trick ‘r Treat doesn’t introduce separate stories to make up one motion picture – the stories all correspond with one another and flow without interruption. For example, the film opens with a couple walking down the street on Halloween eve, and when they approach their house, they remove their costumes and flirt with one another, discussing taking down the decorations in their yard. The cute blonde (Leslie Bibb) teases her man with a ridiculously shapely behind in tight sweatpants, while he retreats into the house to watch a porno. As she is taking down the decorations in the yard, she’s brutally assaulted as some trick or treaters watch and then run in terror…her man eventually wakes up to come downstairs and outside to find her bloody remains and her head on a…well, I won’t give that one away. From there, the opening “comic book” sequence introduces us to other characters in the interwoven story, including a school principal (played by Spider-Man’s Dylan Baker) who catches a fat kid in the neighborhood knocking over jack o’ lanterns and stealing candy, and whom he exacts revenge on for doing these things by feeding him poisoned candy. Baker’s character’s motivation is cemented in his diehard beliefs in and respect for the Halloween tradition – once the fat kid is out of the way in a disgusting display including a chocolate sauce vomiting spree, Baker attempts to bury the kid in his backyard, where apparently, this principal has been collecting other bodies as he masquerades as a serial killer in this small town. Next door, he’s yelled at by his creepy old neighbor played by Red Eye’s Brian Cox, for making so much noise and causing his dog to bark at the fence separating their property.
Meanwhile, a group of sexy young girls are preparing to dress up in costume for a party, and we’re treated to teasingly provocative conversation between these ladies in the dressing rooms they’re in, including one smokin’ hot brunette saying to her friends, “my tits are popping out of this,” while another comments, “that’s the point.” Indeed. Amongst the group is a supposed virgin (Anna Paquin) who’s only desire this Halloween night is to !@!!@!^& her brains out with the cutest guy she can find, and her friends are trying to help. They seduce some guys here and there, attempting to get them to be their “dates” for this “party” they’re going to – but all is definitely not what it seems with these chicks. The seduction element of Halloween is explored here, while on another side of town, a group of mean teens gather to exploit and tease a town misfit…which is a typical element in films launched by the classic Carrie. They lure this creepy girl into a nearby mountain area, and the lead girl tells the group a story about a school bus massacre that happened here years ago on Halloween – the film then displays a flashback sequence, depicting “challenged” children on this school bus who are almost killed by the murderous driver who was paid off by the kid’s parents to get rid of them. He drives the bus to the edge of the cliff the teens are now standing on, but one of the kids breaks free from his restraints on the bus as the driver is handing out candy before attempting to kill them, and drives the bus off the cliff himself. According to the teens now standing at the edge of this cliff, years later, the souls of these murdered challenged kids haunt the waters below…and the bus they were on was never found. They begin to play a prank on the girl they brought out to tease by pretending to be the dead spirits of the kids from that bus crash – but they are soon screaming and running themselves from something not of this world…and very much real…
The film goes back and forth between all these scenarios happening at the same time in this town – the principal that dumps bodies in his backyard, the creepy old man attacked by a small hooded figure named “Sam” that turns out to be a Halloween demon, the sexy girls attempting to get their virgin friend laid and the group of teens attempting to conjure up the spirits of the dead school bus kids. There’s a moment when the comic book pages of animation indicate “EARLIER…” on the bottom of the screen, and the events go back a bit so we can see what happened that got all of these characters into the situations they’re in. The most interesting and surprising moment of Trick ‘r Treat comes when Anna Paquin’s virgin character ends up reversing an attack made on her by a guy at this Halloween festival/party that appears to be a real vampire – could that be the principal under all that vampire makeup and the black mask? Was he a real vampire, or was he using fake teeth to bite girls all Halloween night? Better yet, is this virgin and her sexy friends the nice, flirty group of coochies they’re making themselves out to be? You’ll be in for the surprise of your life after watching this sequence of Trick ‘r Treat.
The most disappointing sequence in the film comes when Brian Cox’s old man scrooge character is attacked by some “thing” in his house that torments him on this Halloween night; he opens his door to find dozens of glowing jack o’ lanterns in his front yard, and then he’s assaulted by the small hooded figure that’s been watching over every situation in the film from a distance…this figure, lovingly named “Sam” (for the real name of the Halloween holiday, Samhain), plans on teaching Cox a lesson for his refusal to “respect” Halloween. The whole thing gets campy and ridiculous, with this small costumed thing slicing at Cox’s legs from under his bed, and then coming after him with a broken-off Halloween lollipop; I don’t know what the point of all of this was, but if you listen to Dougherty during one of the main documentaries on the disc, you’ll see how this was a passionate element for him.
The ride was definitely fun, and I am going to watch this a few more times before I have to return this disc to my editor, and I’m probably going to view it on the 31st. Yet, much like Drag Me to Hell, I just don’t know about this one…it was creepy in the style and panache of Creepshow and other “multiple-tales-in-one-film” titles over the years, but something about it just made it very silly at the end of the day. Definitely worth a rental for this week, though.
TRICK 'R TREAT REVIEW CONTINUED BELOW...