I am a big fan of horror, the good, the bad and the so-bad-it's-good. Much has been written to decry the torture porn movement and I am in complete stride with such disapproval. When it comes to scaring an audience, I believe less is more. While extreme gore, mutilation, torture and cruelty can be unsettling, it is only initially shocking, then it just becomes tepid, like jumping into a cold pool. Another lukewarm foray in the horror genre is the remake niche. When A Stranger Calls, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, have all been poorly remade with exponentially bigger budgets than the originals. These remakes are half-hearted and toothless, relying on slick production value to win over audiences, instead of improving on the original concepts or at least sticking to what worked for the original films. And perhaps the zeitgeist that these respective films were addressing doesn't exist anymore. "The calls are coming from inside the house," were some of the scariest words I'd ever heard in my life. Would they even resonate today? Who uses a land line phone anymore? It's probably just some asshole upstairs on his Blackberry anyway. Horror does seem to be in a sad state, saturated with uninspired, shock-filled remakes. But there is hope and it lies in the few and far between, the independent film, the director willing to take a chance. Or more importantly, the production company willing to take a chance.
Trick R' Treat is a small horror film that lingered in distribution limbo for two years awaiting a theatrical release that never came. It was released direct to DVD in 2009 amidst the overwhelming amount of direct to DVD horror content that has been flooding your Netflix queue. It is not widely popular, but it has gained a following online. (I learned about the movie while perusing different movie sites and blogs only weeks ago. I am, admittedly, late to the party.) It is a breath of fresh air in the current state of horror. What I found most interesting about the movie is that it is based in usual horror plots and themes and yet still seemed original.
The plot is made up of five stories that all converge and diverge throughout Halloween night. Each story is a play on a typical horror device: the mild-mannered man who is actually a serial killer, the scary house and the frightening horrors within, the innocent virgin and her promiscuous friends, the practical joke that goes horribly wrong. In all the stories there is a diminutive man/boy? with a pumpkin for a head, who is the harbinger of bad things to come, and sometimes the perpetrator. This little guy is the spirit of Halloween, seemingly, and someone you will definitely end up rooting for. The way the stories intertwine, in both the past and the present, is done well. There are a few twists, and they were not all telegraphed.
Dylan Baker, Brian Cox and Anna Paquin offer up some good acting, and bring some credibility to the production. These are not exactly deep dramatic roles, but they could be played a lot worse. Even the child actors turned in believable performances. The movie has a pitch perfect tone that is mostly mischievous, never threatening or frightening. It feels closed. Your are definitely on the outside looking in, as there is no individual protagonist to latch onto. This is a moral or a fable with more character types than characters. Leaving you with the reassuring feeling that bad things will happen to them, and not you. Which is altogether different from most horror, but still a pleasure to watch.
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