Trick ‘R Treat (2009)
Review by Jeffery J. Timbrell
Trick ‘r Treat is a horror comedy that reminds me of films like Silver Bullet and Maximum Overdrive; it’s the kind of flick I would have enjoyed when I was twelve years old.
Luckily I’m still emotionally twelve years old; so YAYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!
Yes, OK, I admit it, when a movie starts off with a snide bitch dissing Halloween to an actor from Battlestar Galactica, who promptly walks inside his home, turns on porn and waits for her to die…I MEAN CLEAN UP THE YARD…and then wakes up later on to find her hanging up as a Halloween prop with a lollipop shoved through her skull, I get a certain kind of childish glee. It’s probably born from the fact that I still love Halloween in the same way that most men my age love Hockey and Monster Trucks and other mature manly stuff.
Trick ‘r Treat is a gorgeously directed, hilarious and freaky old-style horror anthology that interconnects four stories of Halloween terror together into one night of ghoulish fun. It’s the kind of EC comics style horror series we all remember fondly from the 1980s, ala Creepshow; where each story acts as a clothes hanger on which to hang corpses, carnage, monster effects and boobs galore.
“So, does Trick ‘r Treat deliver carnage, boobs and monsters, Jeff?”
Why I’m glad you asked random Fatally-Yours.com reader!
Not only does Trick ‘r Treat deliver all of those things, Trick ‘r Treat is a lot like my favorite chicken-wing joint that says they’ll give you two pounds of spicy wings, but actually manages to give you four; only Trick ‘r Treat doesn’t have that nasty surprise you get when you go the bathroom afterward.
Trick ‘r Treat has everything from mentally handicapped swamp zombie children (you heard me) to vampires and werewolves, creepy neighborhood serial killers, little children peeking at boobs and swearing like drunken sailors, the most insanely brutal prank to ever be pulled on a slightly autistic child in history, a crotchety old man and his bastard dog who get a lesson in handing out treats on Halloween, and this adorable kid in his pajamas named Sam who is pretty much a cross between the Great Pumpkin from Charlie Brown and the liquid-metal T-1000 from Judgment Day. Sam is seen through-out the film unleashing brutal torture and torment on anyone who so much as whispers a defiant word towards the holy traditions of Halloween.
Are your nipples erect yet? No? Well get some ice on those suckers and try to pretend you’re as excited as I am. Don’t worry I’ll wait.
Go on.
Don’t forget to wrap the ice-cubes in a wash cloth or something so it’s not too cold.
ALRIGHT! Are you nipples erect now? Good, excellent; nice and pointy.
Now don’t you feel like a dirty bird? Who’s Uncle Jeffery’s dirty little bird? That’s right. It’s you.
Now this is the part of my review where I pontificate at length about the social/political implications of the imagery and deeper themes in this movie and how it connects to a surging undercurrent of intellectual dissent raging in the populace at large. Are you ready?
The greater themes of Trick ‘r Treat: Halloween f’ing rules, Brian Cox is consistently awesome and Anna Paquin is still hot. Yes she is. Shut up. Yes I know she slept with a douchebag vampire in that Cajun show. She was blond so it doesn’t count.
Trick ‘r Treat’s message is that Halloween is the tits and that everyone who hates or violates the laws of Halloween (I’m looking at you douchebag teenagers who go door to door begging for candy without a costume) should die, badly, on-fire and then have their corpse assaulted by mentally handicapped zombie children from the swamp, before being crucified to a crooked tree and filled with candy, like a freshly violated human version of a piñata.
I’m usually not one for the death penalty, but I tend to agree with this movie’s message; screw the people who hate Halloween. What kind of person hates a day when children dress up and have fun and get candy while adults get to tell them spooky stories about respecting the dead, and how ghosts, goblins and werewolves will eat their nards if they act badly? That’s freaking sweet. Imagine how much cooler Santa Claus would be if everyone believed he would eat your nards if you were naughty? You’d see a massive sweeping change overcome the brats during the Christmas season if they were collectively told a mysterious fat man came down their chimney at night, bearing presents, while secretly craving the fresh testicles and ovaries of the wicked. Hell, a few dark, flesh-eating implications could save The Easter Rabbit from the commercialized hell of apathy in which it currently roams. So yeah, Trick ‘r Treat thinks that Halloween should be honored as the single greatest seasonal theme in the history of human civilization; and it celebrates this belief with an orgy of boobs, a fat kid throwing up blood like a human version of a sump-pump and a pumpkin-headed freak-child terrorizing a senior citizen.
I actually love this movie more and more as I write this review.
Sadly, Trick ‘r Treat didn’t get the major theatrical release it deserves because it’s a horror comedy; film fans are unfortunately not always the sharpest spoons in the drawer, so trying to sell them on a film that is equally cute, funny, scary and gruesome is a bit difficult. The combination of elements in Trick ‘r Treat confuses the average audience’s poor widdle minds and makes them have cerebral aneurysms. Any satire or comedy more complex than a talking Chihuahua or hamster makes the average filmgoer’s head implode like that scene in Scanners; for a movie like Trick ‘r Treat, where you have four stories interwoven into one, with comedic elements playing off of horror elements while paying homage to children’s stories and gothic fiction you can see the obvious problem going on here. Trick ‘r Treat is the kind of movie that demands that the poor dears actually pay attention instead of texting their friends on Facebook for the majority of the feature; and if Hollywood has taught us anything it is that the average filmgoer cannot pay attention to a movie unless there are loud explosions going off every five minutes. And that’s just not going to happen in a movie like this one. This is why it is of the utmost importance that the horror fans that enjoy Trick ‘r Treat (and other movies like it) support it and help it get the audience and cult-film status it rightfully deserves.
I think Trick ‘r Treat is a beautifully shot film as well as being remarkably carefree in the way it deals out scares and gore. It’s a breath of fresh air to get away from the cynical, suffocating and ’serious’ horror and enjoy a good light-hearted scare for the sake of having a good light-hearted scare; no strings, no monologues about human cruelty, just fun, fun and more fun. I think kids will love Trick ‘r Treat because it’s the kind of horror movie that is not too violent or scary to drive them away and at the same time it’s a great trip for the nostalgic horror hounds who will love Trick ‘r Treat’s homage to the great horror anthologies of the past.
Trick ‘r Treat is like going on one of those Haunted House rides at the fair; by the time I got out I wanted to go again.
It’s a goofy, gory, slick little movie and a heck of a lot of fun. Check it out.
Trick ‘r Treat will be released on DVD October 6th, 2009.
Order it on Amazon
Watch the trailer:
Popularity: 4% [?]
[ ‹‹ Interview with “Fever Night” Writer/Director Andrew Schrader Book Review: Dunraven Road by Caroline Barnard Smith ›› ]
