In Halloween 3, John Carpenter wanted to turn the Halloween franchise into a kind of Twilight Zone series of interconnected but unrelated horror stories that just happened to fall on Halloween. Unfortunately, this was after the Michael Myers character had already taken a deep hold over the series. I think Trick R’ Treat however, is exactly the kind of movie he had hoped for with H3.
This movie takes a series of spooktacular stories including seductive she-wolves, child-ghost monsters, serial killers, etc. and weaves them all together in what feels like the Halloween movie version of a jigsaw puzzle. Somehow it all manages to work though, thanks perhaps to a combination of great visual imagery and solid direction.
The three main stories involve a group of kids who play a mean prank on a shy girl that, of course, backfires on them, a group of sex obsessed teenage girls at a party, and their token virgin friend, and finally an old cantankerous old man whose past comes back to haunt him, literally.
Suffice to say that several surprises and twists and turns are afoot here, and many characters aren’t who you wind up thinking they are. Anna Paquin I think has my favorite performance here, and looks stunning to boot. Veteran character actor Brian Cox is also a hoot as a curmudgeonly old man.
Anything else, you will have to see for yourself.
Trick ‘r’ Treat gets a three out of five: SATISFYING.
Vortainment 