Tag: October Challenge

For October I decided to watch a horror (or Halloween related) movie every day and review it in the build up to Halloween. The plan was to use that as an opportunity to catch up with all the movies I haven’t gotten around to watching yet. I initially started just casually posting these to Facebook and then to my Minds account, but after completing the month and writing more and more about each movie I was inspired to start this blog. I am retrospectively posting these reviews here when I have time (some of the earlier ones were short so I will have to update them before posting). This was my first.

Trick

First up for October 1st was “Trick’r’Treat” from 2007. Directed by Michael Dougherty (Godzilla: King of Monsters) and staring amongst other Brian Cox (Hannibal Lecter from “Manhunter”) and Anna Paquin (Sookie from True Blood). It’s a linked anthology horror featuring several vaguely intertwined stories all set on Halloween night in one town. The key linking figure is “Sam”, a mysterious figure that appears at first to be a child trick-or-treater in a burlap pajama costume, but is actually a kind of personification of Halloween. Sam has his own story at the end of the anthology is always fund lurking around the other stories (often being treated like a regular trick-or-treater).

There are four main stories, the first features the local school principal who tricks and murders an unruly child in a fairly comedic horror tale mostly involving his struggles to hide the body. The second tale is a pretty classic story of kids daring each other to go somewhere scary, telling a scary tale and then playing a prank to freak out the “weird” kid. This goes exactly as you would expect when the story of the Halloween School Bus Massacre turns out to have more truth to it than they expected. The third story is actually alluded to with some hot out of town girls hooking up with dates for a big party. The apparent lack of any standards for this hook up of course hints that things are not quite as they seem and really it’s best not to trust Sookie Stackhouse offering you the night of your life, lol. The final tale is Sam’s own and also where we get Brian Cox’s full involvement as Sam terrorizes the angry old man in his own house until he learns the true meaning of Halloween.

Treat

There have been a lot of linked horror anthologies over the years and this isn’t the first with a Halloween theme. One of big decisions when making an anthology horror is how many stories you put into the movie. The choice of four here is about perfect as each had enough time to tell its story but none of them felt like they were dominating the others (Compared to something like the “ABC’s of death” with 26 stories or “Books of Blood” where one main story takes up the bulk of the time).  The linking between the stories was done particularly well and this was one of the highlights for me especially between the Principle and Sam stories at either end of the anthology. 

Personally I felt “Tales of Halloween” from 2015 did a better job of the Halloween theme, though that had the benefit of multiple writers and directors to add variety. None of the tales provided anything outside the twists and turns I expected but they were all well executed (as were several of the townsfolk). The actors all put in a solid performance, though Brian Cox was the stand out here. Overall this was a solid horror fest, did a good job of pacing and left me satisfied by the end. One of the better anthologies out there.