Gotta Respect the Halloween Rules

 I was snatching away my 2009 user comments from the IMDb account for the 2007 anthology, "Trick 'r Treat", when I just scanned other users' comments for the film. It astonished me, although I shouldn't be surprised, how mixed the reaction was for the film. Lots of 1/10, with the question, "Worst film of all time?" I'm not a snob who takes folks to task for not liking something I do. But this is too well made to ever be sentenced to the same league of rotten as "Children of the Living Dead" (2001). It's like to make an outrageous point folks rate a film as low as possible. As obnoxious as those ratings are, I am all for the freedom for them to attack any all films even if I couldn't disagree more. Boring and pretentious and a waste of time are thrown around quite a bit. Yes, I think that QT style of storytelling was definitely influencing Dougherty with how he told his anthology. So he's considered pretentious. The tales involved aren't separate unto themselves but inherently connected. Because Bibb and Penikett start the film, returning from a night of drinking during Halloween evening, doesn't mean what happens during the film leaves them out or starts after them. Dougherty makes sure to remind us that the film's time schedule isn't forward but alternating back and forth, as to surprise and describe how clever the intertwining of the characters reveals twists and turns. Whether it's Dylan Baker in a vampire disguise realizing a plumpy brat is easy to candy poison and bury in the back yard than to prey upon, bite, and kill Anna Paquin in Red Riding Hood garb...a "virgin" on the hunt as her pack waits for her to select the perfect guy. And Baker thought he was the hunter. Or a former bus driver thinking he could burn photographs of children in Halloween masks and reconcile the history of his past involving parents paying him to get rid of them because they were considered a nuisance...who just so happens to be a miserable neighbor of Baker's played with Scrooge-like personality and costumed similarly in the grumpy, misanthropic form by Brian Cox, not only visited by the vicious and ferocious Halloween Spirit but the risen dead he thought drowned years prior. As I mentioned back in 2009, I thought this was quite clever, and the wicked routes it takes, with the Halloween aesthetic so vibrant and alive in every scene, just tickles my horror anthology G-spot. The kid pranksters realizing the ghost story is quite accurate as the sweet girl they bullied leaves them to understand real terror, and how Paquin and her girls are far from babes in the woods give us fun nifty development. Baker teaching his son the ropes while facing his own eventual demise and Cox unable to escape his past even after narrowly avoiding Halloween Spirit's wrath, function quite satisfactorily within the anthology format with Bibb's own anti-Halloween sentiment having no place in "Trick 'r Treat". Many folks might frown about this film, but I'm so very much in the camp that considers it a modern Halloween classic. It gets me in the right frame of mind and I would suggest to those fuddy-duddies not to get too loud with that criticism as the Halloween Spirit might be nearby.