Trick 'r Treat - (film review)

            Tonight I finally got to experience the film Trick ‘r Treat.  In 2005 (or 2006, I can’t remember), the trailer piqued my interest as I watched it flash by my television screen.  For years afterwards I anticipated this film in the back of my mind, every so often remembering that it was out there…lurking…waiting.  Keeping in spirit with this blog I will attempt to tackle this film in a way that may be a retreading of reviews past, but hopefully address some thoughts and arguments that are not.

Before I hash into the details of the film I enjoyed, I will say that the film is less a horror film, and more of a Halloween film.  Think of it in terms of the difference between a Christmas film, as opposed to a family feel-good movie.  The aptly named Trick ‘r Treat becomes an exercise in recapturing a childhood holiday essence.  It is not entirely scary as a viewing experience, but what I did notice was that the ominous feeling of dread, which lingers long after I removed the blu-ray from my hardware device, was more powerful than the horror depicted onscreen.

Which brings me to the central angle I approach this film with: atmosphere and the psychological underpinnings of the experience of Halloween, specifically.  There is a difference between the suspense of being alone at night (with strange noises coming from outside and inside your house) at any given time of the year, and the emotions that are conjured, like demons, that forebode your inevitable mortality on Halloween night.  In this case, this film manages to surpass genre classics such as the Halloween series.  Halloween, in those films, is a prop, a backdrop through which a serial killer’s massacre is set against.  In Trick ‘r Treat Halloween is the essence through which the films plotlines and actions derive.

When I was a kid, Halloween would be the only time of the year when everything felt a little scarier, when the promise of death was just a little bit closer, and the fear that Hell lurked beyond your passing was just a little more evident.  The rest of the year, you could tell yourself that you are a good person, and that the tiny indiscretions that plague your seemingly well-intentioned Christian conscience will not lead you to an afterlife of torment and macabre.  Of course, this would only really apply to those who had grown up Christian.  Those from a variety of other religions have equally disturbing omniscience that they must deal with, I’m sure.

So after the film had finished, I was drawn back less by the imbricated storylines and dialogue that helped accent the film, and more by the atmospheric presence it holds.  The continuous presence of jack-o-lanterns, twilight yellows (from either candles or from the eerily disturbing Halloween sun), delight in costuming, and the wonderful entity of Sam (the childlike figure who plagues each story, wearing a custom fitted burlap sack over his suspiciously enlarged head).  What writer/director Michael Dougherty managed to pull off with the character of Sam, is a pre-iconic figure that encapsulates the childlike fear and attraction to evil and dread that comes with the fascination of Halloween.  The film is littered with this sensation, much like how a Christmas film incorporates all the seemingly traditional Euro-North American associations with that particular holiday.

            This is why the film is scary.  It’s not because something terrifying happens in the film (of which some do, but nothing to overwhelm the senses of fear).  It is because long after the film is done, you begin to remember when you were a child and could not pragmatically reason your way out of a fear spiral that you begin to recall that sensation.  How you felt trying to relish in the fun of Halloween: getting and consuming candy, dressing up as your favourite (anti-)hero, and watching scary movies.  Always knowing that in the back of your mind, there was something more dark and sinister about what is happening, what Halloween is really about, and the fear that on this day, you should not tempt the fate of your mortality.
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Grade: 87% (A)