Hey folks, Harry here... Here's two more looks at Michael Dougherty's TRICK R TREAT - This film is screaming to get OUT there. It's strange, like Moriarty, I too, felt Halloween and Trick or Treating was dead, but when my wife and I moved to the neighborhood in Austin we're in now.... Last year, we had close to 168 trick or treaters at our house, when just 5 blocks away, the year before we had just 4 trick or treaters. I suppose, Trick or Treating is just fine, and going good. Now let's get it in THEATERS!
Hey, Harry! Long time reader, first time contributor. I was lucky enough to have Moriarty put me on the list for last night's Hollywood screening of TRICK R TREAT, the directorial debut of Michael Dougherty. We were encouraged to come costumed, and being the playful lad that I am, I came as Jake Gittes from CHINATOWN. I was disheartened upon entering the theater to see only eight or nine out of the four hundred or so attendees wearing costumes, and endured much snickering as I stood in line. "What's wrong with your nose, dude?" was a common question. Once we were in the theater, Moriarty took the stage and thanked us all for coming, saying that he was a new father and that finding neighborhoods that still encouraged trick or treating was becoming harder and harder. The bridge between Halloween and Pop Culture was widening, he said, but this film did a lot to try and bring them back together. Then he introduced Dougherty, a slight man with a slightly dazed grin (guess he hadn't expected so many attendees), and the two of them proceeded to judge an impromptu costume contest. I stood with the others, and when Dougherty got to me he said "If you guys don't know who this is supposed to be, you're not true movie lovers!". Someone yelled "Chinatown!" and I thanked them sincerely. I was applauded, but the biggest applause went to the guy who dressed as Rick Moranis in GHOSTBUSTERS (complete with a collander on his head). The guy was perfect. Hell, it might have been him, bored with staying out of the limelight and craving a little attention. Then the movie started. A woman and a man arrive at home, which has been decorated with pumpkins, ghosts, and dangling severed limbs. The woman is pissed and drunk, a bad combo. Sh tries to extinguish the jack-o-lantern and is reprimanded by her husband, who tells her there are rules they must follow. She blows him off, he goes in to lay down, and she starts to take down the decorations. She is being watched. A shadowy figure across the street. And then... Needless to say, something bad happens. Leave those pumpkins lit, people! As a child of the Eighties, I always thought that CREEPSHOW was the shit. I watched that damn movie every Halloween, and it was the light beer of horror cinema; didn't fill me up, but always satisfying. TRICK R TREAT is the best horror film I've seen since I was a kid. Truly. A wonderful, heady combo of CREEPSHOW and PULP FICTION (and since the production company was BAD HAT HARRY Productions, this doesn't surprise me much). TRT is four (or is it five?) stories, all taking place in the same small town in Ohio, all on the same night: All Hallows Eve. Characters from the different stories intersect, add a piece to the puzzle, and then head on to their own oblivion. I'm not going to go into too much detail, because half the fun of the film is the clever twists. A brief recap: A school principal (played by the underrated and truly wonderful Dylan Baker) catches a fat kid destroying pumpkins and gives him a history lesson he'll never forget; a beautiful girl dressed as Little Red Riding Hood (Anna Paquin) gets lost in the woods on her way to the party and finds a wolf; some kids visit an abandoned rock quarry to pay their respects to an Urban Legend and find that children shouldn't play with dead things; a reclusive old man (Brian Cox, always effective) who hates Halloween is visited by a mysterious masked figure. I can't even begin to tell you how much I loved this movie. The acting, the direction, the script (both funny and scary, with an undercurrent of dread that permeates the whole project ); everything was damn near perfect. I especially enjoyed Baker and Cox, finding the humor in their respective situations and playing it perfectly. Hey, Warner Brothers! What are you, fucking stupid? Do you not want to make money? Does SAW V scare you? Give this movie the release it deserves, you cretins! People want to be entertained so they can forget how fucked we are, both economically and politically, so why don't you do the right thing and release this wide, like, tomorrow? If you use this, call me Atticus Finch.
Our next reader is an incredibly passionate viewer of TRICK R TREAT that saw the film at BUTT-NUMB-A-THON and has become increasingly irate over the lack of enthusiasm that Warner Brothers has put into this film's release...
Long time no write-in. Monty Cristo here. Now that I'm back upright from being sick for a couple days, I've re-prioritized all of my pending work to write this out first. I didn't go to AICN's Los Angeles-area screening of Mike Dougherty's Trick R Treat last night, but instead saw it last December at Butt Numb a Thon 9. This is one of those cases where I am compelled to shout from the rooftops about a film, partly out of enthusiasm for its chops, but mostly out of anger that it's been passed over for one reason or another. Trick R Treat has stuck with me over the last ten months. I've been waiting to have friends ask if I've seen it yet so I can tell them I have, and "that it is fucking excellent and you should take ten friends, it's eleven billion times better than Saw has become." I wanted to write something in to AICN about it last year, but work and life conspired against getting that piece out, and I figured I'd scribble something around its expected timeframe of release (Halloween 2008, as we'd been told at the time). I got more concerned as time rolled by and no release date had popped up yet. Oh, but there's another SAW movie...Jesus H. Christ... The notion that "Saw owns Halloween" is absolutely atrocious. I know it would be considered box office suicide to have put two "scary movies" directly against each other, but Saw 5 locked in the weekend before Halloween a while ago now. If they pick the same weekend for Saw 6: The Undiscovered Torture next year, I can guarantee you that a franchise-weary public would rather wait a weekend (or go the week before) to see Trick R Treat. On what authority can I say this, you may ask. Look, I am not a horror geek. I'm not a torture porn enthusiast either by any means. In all honesty, the remake of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre occasionally still gives me nightmares. I went to Fantastic Fest and loved it but skipped the really gory stuff by and large. That being said, I still enjoy being kept on the edge of my seat and love gallows humor. When they started up Trick R Treat at BNAT 9, I was concerned, because my wife (who'd gone with me to BNAT) didn't make it all the way through The Poughkeepsie Tapes earlier in the evening. On top of that, it began with a husband-wife scene. "Fabulous, my wife is never going to want to go near the Ritz or BNAT again," I thought. A funny thing happened, though. The nature of the movie, an anthology tale centering on The Spirit of Halloween, made it such that the one sequence didn't stick with us the whole rest of the time. By the time it's over, your favorite chunks stick with you and the others pieces were still part of the meal but leave no aftertaste. There were those squirm-inducing bits, but by and large it was much more the type of movie I could recommend to friends who can't watch the really gory stuff but enjoy scary movies to fit the season. It was like a fine horror buffet: there are inevitably things you try that you don't love, but don't ruin the meal in the slightest for the parts you dive into headfirst. The vignettes (which I don't want to spoil for anyone) all move along at a brisk pace, interweave in interesting and entertaining ways, and ultimately feel more satisfying than any Halloween themed movie has in a long time, maybe ever in terms of what I've seen first-run theatrically. My wife, who can barely stand the sight of on-screen violence, in particular loved a couple of the twists and finished the movie saying, "I can't believe I liked it as much as I did." This is usually an insult, but Mike Dougherty has made one of the most accessible scary movies in a long, long time. This thing would overtake Jigsaw costumes with little Samhains running around tackling the shit out of their parents Mike's work here is really solid and Warner Bros. is out of their collective mind if they think they can't make their money back on a theatrical release. On top of that, the potential evident here is ripe (and more appropriate) for a franchise than the vast majority of others out there, and I'm looking directly at Saw in particular. Spiritually, it'll be considered by some as Creepshow 3, but I'd say this is the gateway opportunity to bring something like Creepshow to the masses, who are obviously willing to buy in if only given the opportunity. It isn't the As The Saw Turns nature of Saw's story that keeps people going, it's the brand strength, which according to a couple friends, is going to take a big hit when people go see this new one this weekend. When you see a weakness, go for it! Is WB just waiting for Lionsgate to stop making Saw movies of their own accord? Discerning genre-lovers should stick to limited releases Fear(s) of the Dark or Let the Right One In this weekend (if they can) since they don't have the choice of seeing this excellent film. It's truly a shame this movie is in limbo at all. It's even more of a shame that anyone would consider shoveling this straight to DVD. It's a movie that will build its audience and dedicated fanbase from a theatrical release, on top of the fact that the movie plays well with a crowd. At this point it's up to whether Warner Bros. wants to make money or not. They could have DESTROYED Halloween weekend this year, cut off Saw's head and made it into a Jack o Lantern, but instead they played it safe. See, now I'm getting angry again. Find a weak weekend, even if it isn't Halloween 2009, and pounce, WB. I can only think they delayed releasing this for the same reason as Harry Potter 6 (wink wink): they just need more tentpoles next year. ARRRGGHHHH!!!! Again, there will be many people writing in or writing about this movie who saw it last night. I viewed it nearly a year ago and am still this taken by it. Respectfully submitted from my cell, Monty Cristo
