14 - Trick 'r Treat (2007)

Some Halloween things are traditions.  Bobbing for apples.  Dressing up in spooky costumes.  Going Trick or Treating.  Drinking the blood of slain enemies out of their broken skulls.  For me, it's watching horror movies all month long, reviewing them for my blog, and scarfing so much chocolate candy that my pancreas screams in horror.  The drinking of my enemies' blood out of their broken skulls comes a close second.  I mean, let's be honest, broken bone is sharp and my dexterity isn't what it used to be.  Last time I drank the blood out of a broken skull, I cut my lip.  :-(

Trick 'r Treat (2007) is almost all about Halloween traditions, told through a series of interwoven tales.  They call it an anthology, and there are basically 4 stories, but all of them are so intermingled with each other that it's hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.  There's Laurie, looking to make her first hookup at a Halloween bash with her sisters.  Principal Steven Wilkerson has a hot date for the Halloween parade, but first he has to teach his son how to carve a proper pumpkin.  Some kids are looking to play a prank on a poor weird girl who loves to carve pumpkins, based off an old local legend.  And of course, there's old Mr. Kreeg, who just wants to spend a quiet night at home with his dog.

I don't usually like anthologies.  I've made that abundantly clear over the years I've done my blog.  There's usually like 3 or 4 completely different stories that don't have a damn thing to do with each other, loosely tied together with some duct tape of a tale wrapped around the outside of them.  The short stories aren't good enough to be whole movies, and the over-arching tale is basically a band-aid holding the bloody mess togther like some lifeless Frankenstein's monster stittched together by a blind man with shaky hands.  Trick 'r Treat isn't like that.  There's so many stories here, it's not just 4 tales, it's like there's a whole town's worth of stories, all interconnected on halloween night, and they just focused on 4 of them.  Every time I watch this movie, I see things that I missed the first time around, things that mean something else later on, things you only notice when watching this movie a second time or a third.  I caught this movie on AMC's fear fest, so if you want to watch it there, go ahead.  It's better without commercials, but hey, watch it where you can.  I'm going to toss out a few spoilers so you guys know why I love this movie.

First off, let's take Sam.  Sam looks like a little kid wearing his pajamas around on Halloween night with a burlap sack over his head, looking to score some easy candy.  That's not Sam.  Sam watches everything to make sure everyone is following the rules on Halloween night.  Sam's in all the stories to some extent, more or less, but he's not the narrator.  Sam might be the narrator, if Sam spoke.  Sam doesn't speak, but he writes wonderful messages in blood.  Then there's Pricipal Wilkerson, who has a whole series of Halloween hijinks planned for the evening, but things don't go exactly as planned.  They never do!  And Little-Red-Riding-Hood Laurie, played wonderfully by Anna Paquin, but she's only a pretty piece of the whole story.  Then there's Mr. Kreeg, an old man with buried secrets, played by Brian Cox.  But old secrets rarely stay buried on Halloween night, as Mr. Kreeg can attest to.

I want to say more about this movie, but it's much too good to spoil.  Go watch it where you can, or do like I did, and get it on DVD or Blueray.  That's all I have for tonight.  Almost halfway through the month, and at least two weeks worth of horror to go.  I don't know if my heart can take all this excitement!   Oh, who am I kidding?  I've been watching horror movies and reading scary books since I was in 2nd grade.  Violent thunderstorms put me to sleep.  I live for this time of year.  :-)

See you people tomorrow night with another review.