The Good

A great movie for this and any other Halloween season.

The Bad

Sometimes this movie seemed to get lost within itself.Trick 'r Treat is a horror anthology of the highest order that recalls such films as Creepshow, The Twilight Zone and those well written horror stories that make fall such a wonderful time to be a child. This film gives us a sadistic principal/father who eventually finds his own comeuppance in another part of this movie. There are of course a bevy a hot girls on their way to a party, this group, led by Anna Paquin, also happen to be creatures of a different sort (I am trying not to give too much away here). After this, the demographic gets a bit younger and we find a bunch of young kids who are playing a prank on one unsuspecting girl. The prank centers around a busload of children who were driven into a rock quarry. As you can guess, the people in this portion who play the prank don't have the last laugh. Lastly, an old man who hates Halloween finds his life seriously altered when Trick 'r Treat's unifying character, Sam (short for Samhain?), shows up to make him understand the importance of the world's most spookiest night.

All in all, Trick 'r Treat e Halloween film that might seem like it's trying too hard to be several other films but at least in trying in does what it does well.

Features

Audio Commentary

Writer/director Michael Dougherty, storyboard artist Simeon Wilkins, concept artist Breehn Burns, and Trick 'r Treat's composer Douglas Pipes sit back and talk about this movie. Sadly, they seem to get too relaxed and they spend too much time actually watching the movie and telling us what we are seeing on screen! Where are the on set anecdotes? What about the funny stories that were bound to happen with such a large cast? What about the writing process? How much post-production did this movie go through? Why was it initially presented like it was going to be a theatrical release and yet it went straight to video? There... that's some food for thought when they do the extra, full on, filled with bonus features addition of this Blu-ray disc.

The Lore and Legends of Halloween

Additional Scenes

These are scenes from the film that we either A) didn't see or B) we saw but they needed to be trimmed back a bit. Also, Dougherty offers up reasons for why he did what he did to this film. Something tells me that he had a few more people talking in his ear than he would've liked, but, truthfully, at 82 minutes this film feels a lot longer. It is cut in such a way that the multiple character arcs make this film feel like we are a lot more invested in the film than we might be otherwise. If you are big fan of this movie then you should probably check these out. If not, I think you can get by without them.

Season's Greetings

School Bus FX Comparison

Playing at about a minute in length this feature is exactly what it says it is. Why they felt the need to include this on the Blu-ray disc is anybody's guess, but I am sure that they wanted to pack this release with as many bells and whistles as possible. I don't think you can fault Warner Bros. for wanting to do that, but maybe this movie should've come out in the theaters after all?

Video

1080p/VC-1 Transfer - 2.39:1. This movie looked awesome on Blu-ray disc. There is so much happening on screen at all times. Writer/Director Michael Dougherty and director of photography Glen MacPherson do not let any portion of the frame go unused. There's a lot of black and orange in this movie and none of that ever seems like it gets old on screen. I also liked how if this movie was in the present or the past (in time or story), the colors remained the same, but they were also muted and desaturated depending on what the effect called for. Warner Bros. has done a fine job transferring this movie to Blu-ray disc. It really feels like in this format it was given a lot of room to breath and there aren't any points where the images looked baked or hurt by the process.

Audio

English: Dolby TrueHD 5.1. Spanish and French Dolby Digital 5.1. The audio on this movie was good but there isn't anything that great about it. It isn't used to drive home the effects or the horror in this film. Due to this, I think that a big opportunity was missed. As I have stated above there is a lot happening with the visuals. These could've really been complimented by a kick ass score. Unfortunately, we are never offered one so that hinders us a bit in being able to really get into this movie. That said, the way this movie is edited actually compensates for the lack of audio somewhat.

Package

Our main character Sam stands in the middle of this cover with the multiple characters from this film surrounding him. The back portion features more images from this movie, a description, Special Features and technical specs. Again, black and orange are prominently featured here and this makes one excited about this movie as a Halloween film and it's potential to punch up the holiday itself.

Final Word

When I first put on this movie I was a bit dubious. This site, as well as bunch of other sites, had been tracking the movement of Trick 'r Treat since it was first announced (at that time the film was supposed to come out in theaters). All of the images looked really cool and it seemed like a great Halloween movie was afoot. Then it seemed like this thing got mired in post production (it is produced by Bryan Singer so it no doubt was originally longer than the 82 minutes that it clocks in here), and suddenly this movie gets dumped to straight-to-video and it seems like, potentially, all the coverage this movie got was for a whole lot of nothing. Was this the plan all along... to create some sort of cult around the film before it was released? Heck, even Pathology came out a little bit and if one of the actors in that film farted we were asked to cover it. Why did Trick 'r Treat get such short shrift?

Aside from that, Trick 'r Treat really delivers on being a solid Halloween film. Sure it is filled with poor acting and other bad moments at times, but when it works, this movie makes one feel like they are entering the world of R.L. Stein, Stephen King, Edgar Allen Poe and H.P. Lovecraft all at the same time.