Mocking Halloween: Trick 'r Treat

Even though Trick ‘r Treat is relatively new, it has been a Halloween classic since the night it was released on DVD. Much in the vain of Creepshow, Trick ‘r Treat is an anthology of different stories that take place on Halloween night, in which they all interconnect somehow. There is the story Principal Wilkins and his dark homicidal secret, the story of 4 kids who decided to play a prank on the school ‘weirdo’ but end up getting more than they expected, the story of a young woman is trying to find Mr. Right but ends up find the wrong person and the story of curmudgeonly old man who is visited by the spirit of Halloween in effort to change his ways. They’re all really good stories but there was one thing that bothered me about all of it.

Again, I might be getting a little nitpicky here but the way that Dougherty shows a town celebrating Halloween is so over-the-top and flashy. It reeks of Hollywood. Perhaps it’s my bitter outlook on the suburbs or maybe it’s because I lived in the suburbs too long and I started noticing trends but… no matter how much a town is crazy for Halloween, I’ve never seen anybody go that far. Sure, they may have a parade and that’s fine but every single house on the block had jack-o-lanterns, some sort of Halloween décor and was passing out candy. In my neighborhood, at least, we were lucky to get 3 consecutive homes that passed out candy. To me it seemed like a really flashy depiction of Halloween and it wasn’t even the right type of depiction. I guess you can argue that it was meant to be flashy because the whole movie was based off of a fake comic book but still…

Now, the idea of showing a Hollywoodized Halloween didn’t take me out of the movie nor did it affect my overall opinion of the film but I did shrug and say, “Oh c’mon, who does that stuff?” whenever I saw something that was overkill. A good example of a time where I said this was when we first seen Rhonda’s house caked in jack-o-lanterns. I don’t care if you have the biggest hard on for Halloween; you’re not going to make 3 dozen jack-o-lanterns. The good news is: there wasn’t really much to complain about Trick ‘r Treat. It’s an almost flawless movie!