Writer(s): Dougherty
Starring: Anna Paquin, Brian Cox, and Dylan Baker
Horror movie enthusiasts are a depressing bunch—this is something I can both say, and verify, because I am one of them. Many of us seem to want to like things so bad, that we heap praise on things that aren’t deserving of it. I mean, let’s be real here: There are movies in every genre that are terrible, but horror movies seem to be an afterthought to most studios, who merely churn them out to gain a few bucks, without putting any thought into the final product.
We are certainly entitled to better, but in general we must settle for the dozen or so movies every year that defy the low expectations of the genre, and deliver us something worth getting excited about; that rare movie that is filled with terror, that doesn’t assume its audience is comprised completely of idiots, and that actually provides some thoughts and originality of its own.
Trick ‘r Treat is such a movie that has been garnering a lot of attention from both critics and audiences alike. It is an anthology movie, in which all of the stories are cleverly connected, a la Pulp Fiction, and take place within the span of a single Halloween night. Reviewers have largely been quick to lavish praise on it, with many declaring it to be a new Halloween classic.
But all of this is ignoring the simple fact that Trick ‘r Treat is a terrible film. It’s every bit as boring, poorly written, and suspenseless as any number of the horror films released annually are. Just like Tarantino, writer/director Michael Dougherty borrows, steals, and rips off numerous tropes and ideas from any number of other horror efforts, and slaps them all together in the hopes that something will stick. But where Tarantino can mask his plagiarism with an excess of style, Dougherty’s end vision is stunningly bland, instead blending in with the very movies he was hoping to distance himself from.
The first tale concerns a nerdy high school principal’s nasty extracurricular activities. This one is supposed to be infused with a steady streak of black comedy throughout, but like much of the script, the “humor” is lifeless and unfunny while even the basic premise has been done to death. In the second, Anna Paquin (yes, THAT Anna Paquin) plays a virgin who’s basically looking for anyone to take her virginity. Or is she? This one features a painfully typical twist that admittedly gives way to a slightly less typical one; even that is ruined with an over-reliance on computer effects that look tacky.
In the third, we have a group of high school-ish kids playing a prank on a nerdy girl, the most thoroughly original horror movie idea of all time. Then, in an equally inspired twist, their pranks end up actually coming true! In the finale, an old man is attacked by a small person wearing a burlap sack over his head, a recurring character who appears in all of the stories.
Ironically, the best thing this whole mess has going for it is the whole Pulp Fiction rip-off thingy I mentioned earlier. While it’s true Dougherty doesn’t quite have the flashy style of his influencer down, the way he commands the chronological events is the one area where he is worthy of Tarantino; minor events in one story become major parts of their own story later on, and characters seamlessly fluctuate in and out of multiple plots. He really makes the time jumps look and feel effortless, and certainly deserves credit in that regard.
Unfortunately, he manages to ruin just about every other potential positive the movie has going for it—he even decides to unmask its creepy main character toward the end (the kid with the burlap sack) to unintentionally hilarious results (think Pumpkinhead meets ET and you’re about spot-on). Even the humor, which he tries to inject throughout, falls flat way more often than not; I cringed way more often than I actually laughed, with the total ratio (of times cringed:actual laughs) somewhere around 10:1.
By the end, all I could think about was how sorry I felt for Anna Paquin; if her career has fallen this far, she should really think about immediate retirement.
RECAP: The chronological time jumps (i.e. Pulp Fiction) are really well done, the only category where I can honestly say Trick ‘r Treat succeeds (actually, come to think of it, the acting is also pretty well above-average for this type of film). The writing is terrible, there are no scares and very little suspense to speak of, and the comedy falls embarrassingly flat close to 100 percent of the time. Mercifully, it’s rather short, but still feels about 82 minutes too long.
RATING: 2/10
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