A long wait fuelled by fanboy hype is a dangerous thing, and after seeing the long-shelved ‘Trick ‘r Treat’, a movie originally set for a Halloween 2007 release, funded by Warner and with a Bryan Singer co-sign, plus books and merchandise tie-ins, on the runup to its October 2009 DVD release, it was decent. I wanted groundbreaking. If I’d caught it late at night or been swayed by bombastic press quotes into a rental…sorry, download, blind to the film’s content, I would’ve been satisfied. But such is the power of protracted delays and word-of-mouth that in its 82 minutes, it left me wanting.
That’s not to say you shouldn’t check it out if you’re even mildly led towards genre films – the performances are good, there’s a fair few shocks and black comedy moments, and the art direction is phenomenal. I just like my horror anthologies a little too much, and the sting in the tail of the four or five overlapping stories ‘Trick ‘r Treat’ contains seemed to have been, perhaps with the exception of Brian Cox’s eventful evening, clipped. I blame the animated comic book opening for drawing comparisons with the legendary ‘Creepshow’ – that’s a tough one to top.
GWARIZM 