Trick r Treat

Trick r Treat (2007)
*** 1/2

I was scrolling my hard drive for something to watch tonight at midnight to kick off Horrorthon in the right way, and I came across this one that I remembered downloading when a bunch of you reviewed it last year (or was it the year before?). Anyway, I must not have had time to watch it before October was over, because I'd forgotten that it was on there.

I'm guessing that I put it off because it's an anthology movie, which I generally don't like: NY Stories, Four Rooms, Cat's Eye, etc. Meh. I feel like at best they usually achieve "cleverness." And this one certainly does do that, but it's also got a layer of atmosphere that unites the various vignettes in something close to a fun spooky organic whole.

And the atmosphere they go for here is kind of a quintessential mid-American Halloween vibe. Naturally, they set this in Ohio, which is pretty apt. This place is nutso for holidays generally, but Halloween in particular. There's corn mazes, and pumpkin patches, and haunted houses, and haunted corn mazes, and haunted pumpkin patches seemingly in every small town. And Athens, OH, does host a big costume street party that I think inspired some of the shots from the film. Like 30,000 folks coming in from all over "big."

My favorite bit in the movie is when Brian Cox is getting attacked by the Halloween spirit monster thing. Cox is laying on the floor, all bloodied and hurt and exhausted, but he's relieved as he's just emptied his double barrel into the monster, who seems clearly down for the count. But then a disembodied hand comes crawling around the corner, and Cox is laying there on his back, sees it, and just says in this exasperated tone, "Oh you gotta be fucking kidding me." And he nails it so it doesn't come across as silly movie banter--he's clearly still scared and in pain and all that...but he's also pissed off, and when you're pissed off and bleeding and terrified, you have to sort of curse out whatever brought this shit down on you, right?

Anyway, great start to Horrorthon 2011. I'm off!