Time is a flat circle, but I can’t remember where I put my reading glasses. I look at Trick ‘r Treat, and I see that it came out in 2007, but I can’t place that within my own timeline. It is a film I had not previously watched, but I don’t ‘remember it coming out either. I don’t recall people talking about it back then or me having any desire to watch it. The poster with the kid in a scarecrow outfit is familiar, but that’s about it.

In the years since, I’ve seen it around, but something about it gave me the feeling that I wouldn’t like it, so I’ve always ignored it. I was probably living in China when it came out, and I wasn’t paying much attention to what movies were hitting the theater then (because there weren’t any theaters to go to – that I knew of anyhow), so it probably just came and went without me really knowing it existed. 

For reasons I can’t begin to understand, the film has been popping up in my feed a lot this year. People have been talking about it and mostly saying good things about it, so against my better judgement, I gave it a watch this afternoon. I should have listened to my internal judges. This movie is not good.

It is a movie that, had I watched it at just the right time in my life, (though I’m not sure when that would have been, probably not 2007, for I was far too into J-horror at that moment, but maybe when I was a teenager had I been a teenager in 2007 or if this film had somehow been released in 1993), I would have loved it. I would have considered it dumb, but fun. Now it just seems dumb.

It is an anthology film, and I have to admit from the start that I don’t generally like anthology films. In the same way I don’t like short films or short stories even, anthologies rarely give their individual stories enough time to really tell their tale or develop their characters. They often rely on gags or tricks at the end to punch you with emotion. This one does better than most, interweaving its stories in interesting ways. It bounces back and forth in time, allowing you to see characters that just died in a previous story once again – like Pulp Fiction, only dumber and with more teenaged killing. 

What’s weird is that kid on the cover with the burlap sack on his head, looking like a scarecrow; he feels like our guide, our cryptkeeper to these stories, but he’s not really. Except for the final story, he doesn’t really do anything. At some point during each story, usually at the end, we’ll see him just kind of standing there. At one point I thought he might be a demon, possessing others to do his evil deeds.

Actually, according to Wikipedia, that kid is named Sam, and he is a demon who punishes people for breaking the “rules” of Halloween. I’m not entirely sure what the rules are or how they all broke them. They certainly aren’t explained in any clear way through the film.

But whatever, it doesn’t matter. This is a film that clearly hasn’t spent a lot of time thinking things through or taking itself too seriously. It is a film where a horror hound could take his not fond of scary movies date and still get to make out afterward. It is a film practically designed to watch with a bunch of friends. It has enough violence, jump scares, and just a little bit of gore to satisfy horror hounds, while not making those who are a little more squeamish run away.

Like I said, it is a film that I really would have liked earlier in my life. If you can turn your brain off and not think too hard about it, there is fun to be had in it. I just couldn’t do that. Within fifteen minutes I was annoyed. 

None of the stories are bad. There are some fun kills and some fun allusions to other horror films (I caught nods to Halloween Parts 1 & 2 and A Nightmare on Elm Street 2). But it just didn’t really do it for me. I started to break down all the parts that got on my nerves, the plot points that didn’t make sense, etc., but this is already long. I will say the one segment I did enjoy was the last one with Brian Cox as a crotchety old man, and that was mainly because Brian Cox is awesome.

So, yeah, this was definitely a not for me at this stage of my life kind of film.