Trick 'r Treat (2007)

This movie is So awesome. It is worth the wait. I wish they would release it now. It deserves a theater release-not straight to DVD. It is 4 stories that are intertwined. If you love Halloween you will love this movie!! The imagery alone is fantastic. The stories are great and Sam should be a cult classic. (He is the child in the movie.) It simply tells the rules of Halloween and you must obey them. Or else! Let's cross our fingers for a speedy release! I know I'm going to buy the DVD. I have no idea why the delay? The comedic timing mixes perfectly with the horror. It is scary in parts. It truly captures the meaning of Halloween to me.

Fmovies: 'Trick r Treat' is a comic-style anthology and the different tales are woven together pretty well. The direction is slick and the structure is sound.

The tales themselves are a mixed bag. Not bad but not stunning.

The injection of two or three decent actors gives it enough 'oomph' to lift it just above your average horror flick. Without the likes of Brian Cox and Dylan Baker I fear this may have slipped into the murky depths of DVD oblivion but, as I say, they do enough to keep it all watchable.

'Trick r Treat' is silly fun that should please most horror fans.

After watching Trick R' Treat, I felt something was simply missing: from beautiful set decoration to conceptual camera angles, this is, by its cover, the perfect direct-to-DVD horror movie. But considering what could be lacking from such a film, I ventured to the heart of the story and finally realized that Trick R' Treat is, simply put, devoid of any scares.

Don't get me wrong: this movie is anything but boring. From pumpkin-faced terrors to blood-sucking creatures, this movie has its share of creeps. Not only that, but each of the separate story lines (there are 4 total) are woven together so slickly that there are bundles of shocks you won't see coming.

But none of this can make up for the fact that Trick R' Treat is, at its best, only creepy; a movie that used the same layout and attained the same tone as "The Twilight Zone Movie." I was eagerly awaiting the moment when it would break off from creepy and truly get scary, like John Carpenter's "Halloween." But sadly, Trick R' Treat's clever story never dishes out the scares.

Trick 'r Treat fmovies. Nowadays, there are so many horror films out there that are packed full of mindless gore, repetitive jump scares and little plot. The many sequels of Saw relied on all gore and no story, the Hostel Trilogy is plain sick, (even though the first one was just about OK) and many many others that probably couldn't satisfy the sickest minds. Which brings us the difference between Trick R Treat and all those other terrible horror films out there.

Trick R Treat sure is original. It's not some mindless blood fest, it doesn't have pointless nudity, and it isn't some crappy remake of an original classic horror film that we are getting so many of these days. It's purely an original horror film, and it's a breath of fresh air. Trick R Treat is an indie, stand alone horror film directed by Michael Dougherty. The film that contains 4 individual stories that all tie in together at the end of the film. The stories themselves are actually very good, keeping us on the edge of our seats with interest and gives us a nice little twist at the end of each one that even managed to surprise me when I watched it a second time a few months later. Sure, it's not the scariest film ever made, it isn't that gory either. What it is is clever, old school original horror that separates itself from all those other horrors out there.

The stories revolve around a young teenager (Anna Paquin) looking for someone to have her first time with, an irritable old man living alone, a school teacher with a dark, twisted side, and a horrible school prank revolving around what seems to be only an urban legend. Sound simple enough, right? Well, each one has its own shock and twist towards the end, and how they all link in with each other is really well done. One character I particularly liked was the creepy young child with the pumpkin like mask that appeared in each story. He doesn't feature in much, but he really gets to shine in the very last scene that is defiantly worth the wait.

So give it a shot, it's something new that sadly we just don't get enough of these days.

"Trick 'r Treat" is probably what they intended "Halloween III" to be: A fun little horror movie that takes place at and revolves around Halloween. The episodic structure of the movie and the comic book background are reminiscent of George A. Romero's "Creepshow" and "Tales From The Crypt".

Although there is a certain amount of gore and some nudity this never feels like "hardcore horror", but more like a movie you could enjoy on a rainy afternoon with your kids... and that's a good thing. We've had so many shocking, violence-laden movies lately, that this is a very welcomed return to the more light-hearted, charming horror of our childhood.

"Trick 'r Treat" never strives to be special or meaningful. The episodes aren't especially original or disturbing, but director/screenwriter Michael Dougherty proves that you can breathe life into a horror movie just by taking it seriously, by putting your soul into it. The settings are atmospheric, the cinematography is inspired and beautiful. Some scenes are blatantly stolen from other movies (a scene that involves a little person slicing a grown-ups heel from underneath the bed is taken right out of "Pet Semetary", then we got the hand with a life of its own, that we've all seen before in "Evil Dead II", the Addams family movies and even "Waxwork II: Lost In Time"). However, these moments seem more like respectful nods to the movies we enjoyed as kids.

"Trick 'r Treat" has got its heart in the right place. It's the perfect movie for Halloween. It's charming and lots of fun. Great to see that there are still people like Dougherty out there who make old fashioned horror movies like this one.

Just when it looked like the anthology movie was dead, along comes Director/Writer Michael Dougherty's Trick 'r Treat to not only breathe new life into this overlooked format, but also firmly establish itself as one of the best films to keep on the shelf and revisit each Halloween – if the folks at Warner Bros. ever decide to release it, either in theaters or to DVD.

Selected to close out Montreal's 2009 Fantasia film fest, Trick 'r Treat spins five intertwined tales featuring an assortment of classic critters and creeps, with each interlocking story carrying its own "Twilight Zone"-type twist. The single constant throughout is Sam (Quinn Lord), a mysterious diminutive munchkin dressed in a pajama jumper and sporting a burlap sack for a head with buttons for eyes, who appears briefly in each segment and takes center stage in the final story.

Borrowing a visual style from the classic EC horror comics, Dougherty deploys vintage on-screen graphic call-outs like "Later" or "Meanwhile" to let the audience know which scenes are running in order, concurrently, or previously in the film's timeline, which comes full circle at its conclusion, ending where it began.

With exquisite art direction by Tony Wohlgemuth and lush visuals by cinematographer Glenn MacPherson (2008's Rambo, Final Destination) the segments tell the tales of a young wife who can't wait to ditch the trappings of Halloween, even though the film's mythology says it's taboo to blow out a pumpkin before midnight; a sinister school principal and single dad with a nefarious agenda planned for trick-or-treaters; a young virgin nervously seeking her first time with her pack of girlfriends; a group of kids in quest of the truth behind a local urban legend; and an aging recluse with a tortured soul who finds his quiet Halloween night rudely interrupted by Sam.

Dougherty, whose last major credit was as co-screenwriter of Superman Returns, invokes a spirit of childhood fun borne from hours spent burrowing through editions of EC Comics, Warren Publishing's Eerie and Creepy, and DC's House of Mystery to create a fun, rollicking ride that is rare in movies today.

The sad aspect of this is that while Trick 'r Treat has been enjoying a positive response from the festival circuit, it's still a guess as to when this gem will be released. While the month of October would be a no-brainer, the movie was originally targeted for a 2007 release, only to see that get pushed back again and again. It's a shame for such a fine film to languish on the shelf, only to be seen by a select few at sympathetic festivals, for Trick 'r Treat is virtually an instant classic of the genre, even if its only audience exposure ends up being via direct-to-DVD.