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Released by: Warner Brothers
Released on: 10/06/09
Director: Michael Dougherty
Cast: Anna Paquin, Brian Cox, Lauren Lee Smith, Leslie Bibb, Tahmoh Penkiett, Dylan Baker
Year: 2009
The Movie:
There was a time not all that long ago where horror anthologies were a pretty regular theatrical occurrence, but it's seemed as of late that those days were long behind us - enter first time director Michael Dougherty and his debut feature, Trick 'R Treat, an anthology film set on Halloween night in a small Ohio town. Owing much to films like Creepshow and television shows like Tales From The Crypt and Tales From The Darkside, the film feels very much like a throwback to old fashioned horror, though made with all the glass and style you'd expect from a newer feature.
The film mixes in six different stories all of which interconnect based on location and characters. The first tells of a couple who come home to clean up the front yard after a night of drinking, only for the wife (Leslie Bibb) to meet with a very unfortunate end while her husband (Tahmoh Penikett) passes out watching dirty movies upstairs. This leads into a bit where the school principal (Dylan Baker) gets revenge against one of the local kids much to his own son's amusement, which segues nicely into a bit about a group of four young ladies heading out for a night of partying and boy-boffing. Despite the initial hesitance of the virgin of the group (Anna Paquin) the group insists on attending a lively party but with surprisingly shocking results. From there we see a group of pre-teens play a nasty prank on 'Rhonda The Retard' by taking the poor girl down to an abandoned quarry where, local folklore has it, a bus driver killed a bus full of special-ed kids by driving the bus into the water below. Of course, these things never go as planned, which leads into our last story, where the principal's crotchety old neighbor (Brian Cox) gets a surprise visit from an unexpected and nasty guest.
Benefiting from a decent cast and an interesting (and often times amusing) oddball structure, Trick 'R Treat is a whole lot of fun, the kind you don't seem to get in horror movies these days. It never feels intentionally retro or kitschy, at least never intentionally so, but it definitely feels like a product of the eighties and I mean that in the best possible way. The performances are fine across the board, with the always charming Paquin delivering a wholly believable performance as 'the innocent girl' (and looking fine in her Little Red Riding Hood outfit) while Brian Cox plays the mean Mister Wilson type perfectly. Bibb and Penkiett are pretty disposable, literally when speaking of their characters, but Dylan Baker is great as the twisted school principal who harbors some very deep rooted issues.
At just over eighty minutes the movie kicks along nice and quickly, never overstaying its welcome and managing to deliver some great make up and gore effects along the way. There are a few well timed jump scares to keep you on your toes as well as a nice, thick atmosphere of general weirdness that fits in perfectly with the various costumes and characters running throughout the movie. Despite its straight to video origins, Trick 'R Treat proves to be considerably better than most of the horror films that have managed to find theatrical play in the last year or two, so here's hoping we see more from Dougherty in the future and that this debut offering finds the audience it deserves on video.
Video/Audio/Extras:
One of the coolest things about Trick 'R Treat is its visual style. While plenty of modern horror movies are content to model themselves after the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, along comes Dougherty who seems to remember that horror movies can be colorful. By allowing all the color associated with Halloween, orange in particular, to shine through in the visuals while still using shadows and darkness to build atmosphere and provide some good scares, Trick 'R Treat stands out as one a truly great looking film and Warner's 1080p VC-1 encoded 2.40.1 Blu-ray release does a great job of bringing it all to life. The reds used for the blood and gore come through with just the right amount of brightness without ever looking oversaturated while skin tones look perfect and very natural. Detail is strong throughout and there are no noticeable problems with compression artifacts or edge enhancement. There are some scenes that look to have been shot with an intentional softness to them and a couple of shots look just a tiny bit noisy but really this is nitpicking, as Warner have done a very good job here.
The primary audio mix is an English language Dolby TrueHD 5.1 although Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 and French Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks are also included. The TrueHD track is centered around the front of the soundstage but surround channels are used frequently to build atmosphere - you'll notice it during the scenes where the costumed revelers are walking up and down the streets of the town and you'll notice it during some of the more intense/horrific scenes that pepper the film. Dialogue is always easy to understand and the levels are well balanced while still allowing the lower front end to rumble effectively when needed. Subtitles are provided in English SDH, Spanish, and French. There are a few scenes that could have maybe been a bit more aggressive but overall this is a solid mix.
The extras start off with a commentary track where writer/director Michael Dougherty is joined by artists Breehn Burns and Simeon Wilkins and composer Douglas Pipes for a fairly in-depth talk about putting this project together. Understandably Dougherty is the point man here, and he's got the most to say and he does a good job explaining the projects origins and the trials and tribulations he went through to get it finished. The other participants all chime in to elaborate on points when and where they can and there's a nice, relaxed, and sometimes rather funny atmosphere here that makes it a pretty easy track to listen to despite a few too many instances of dead air.
Also worth checking out is the twenty-eight minute featurette, The Lore And Legends Of Halloween, which is structured in such a way that it intertwines factual information about traditions of the holiday with some cool making of footage and cast and crew interview bits. It's a different way of presenting the standard behind the scenes documentary and it works quite well.
Rounding out the extras are seventeen minutes worth of deleted material (basically just some character extensions which don't add a whole lot and which would have hurt the pacing of the picture) complete with optional commentary from Dougherty, a neat Trick 'R Treat animated short (also with optional commentary) and a quick one minute bit that shows how CGI was used to create the school bus scene from the film. All in all, a decent array of extras, though everything here is unfortunately presented in standard definition.
The Final Word:
Twisted, funny, classy and scary all at the same time, Trick 'R Treat gets a justifiably impressive Blu-ray debut from Warner with excellent audio and video and a strong set of extras to compliment one of the best major studio horror films to come out in some time.