Trick 'r Treat

(2009) ****

This is Sam. He's fond of candy. You will be seeing him everywhere in this movie. He's the spirit of Halloween. He's there hanging out whenever monsters, human or otherwise, go on the prowl. You don't want him to catch you breaking any Halloween traditions. That makes him really mad.


Trick 'r Treat weaves five tales (official counts have it at four, but leave out one part that has a definite beginning middle and end) all taking place one Halloween night. A young woman learns why you don't blow out your jack o' lantern light. A school principal keeps a nasty tradition alive. A gaggle of schoolkids play a very mean trick. Four young women come to town to find dates for a very important engagement. A cranky old man gets an unwelcome Halloween visitor.


These tales have all the coziness of the fireside ghost stories of our youth. Telling tales at camp, we got to know how life can sometimes be horrifically cruel for no reason. We learned that bad people sometimes get their just desserts. And we learned that real monsters always win in the end. There are rules of conduct for Halloween and for your life, and you invite yourself into a world of consequences when you decide to break them. Trick 'r Treat refreshes all these old lessons. We even get to spend some time riding along with the monsters, and what fireside kid would say no to that?


Trick 'r Treat aims deliberately to be a part of the Halloween pantheon, much in the same way that "It's the Great Pumpkin" is, or the way "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" is for Christmas. It'll never quite get in our heads the same way as the two shorts I just mentioned because it's not a kid movie. We won't grow up with it. But I do think that from this point on, people who decide to make Trick 'r Treat a Halloween tradition will find the holiday enriched by the movie. It really nails Halloween as an atmosphere. You can see it in the color palette. You could almost feel the wetness on the porch wood, the dampness in the soil. And, of course, it's got monsters.


On a side note, I think it's a bummer that the producers weren't able to secure "Trick or Treat" as the title. They held back because there's already been a movie called Trick or Treat, and as chance would have it, I reviewed it two Thons ago -- it was good. Bummer about it though: Trick or Treat has nothing essential to do with Halloween. It could have been called "Rock n Roll Revenge" or "Heavy Metal Massacre" both of which have the benefit of suiting the plot much better and also being awesome names for a movie. Trick 'r Treat? Kind of a dumb name. Great movie though.

PS - Nice mask!