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Johnny feasts upon Dougherty's TRICK R TREATs!
SPOILER ALERT !!
Hey folks, Harry here with a test screening review of the final cut of Michael Dougherty's TRICK R TREAT!!! It's one of the jewels at this year's FANTASTIC FEST - and one that I can not wait to get a look at. So let's see what Johnny has to say, shall we?
Hey Guys,
I'm not sure who I should send this to so I'll just CC it to a few and see where it goes from there...
Tonight I was lucky enough to catch a supposedly final cut of Trick R' Treat.
I've had a few White Russians tonight and I've been looking forward to this film for a while so I know my opinions are biased but I thought my ideas on the film still might be worth sharing.
This film is fun from start to finish. It never takes itself to seriously or gets to silly. It's solid with just the right amount of scares and humor balanced with enough suspense to make me want to shit.
What the film really has going for it is Dougherty's attention to detail. And when I say detail I mean how he's constructed these elaborate sets that culminate into this legendary Halloween night. The streets are all clogged with brown decaying leaves, the moon is blood red, Jack-O-Lanterns are in every shot and everyone is in costume drinking. He seriously creates this world where the perfect Halloween exists and the entire time you are watching this film you never leave that world.
Now I'll just get to the meat and will run down what I thought was the Great, Good, and Bad.
The Great: Dylan fucking Baker. This guy is just perfect for this role. He steals the movie in every scene he stars in and some of the most suspenseful parts of the film are with him. He reminds me of something I heard Bernie Wrightson say about horror where you imagine a business man on a street dressed in a suit waiting for a cab and there on his perfectly polished shoe you see a tiny drop of blood. I know I probably butchered that but it really nails his character and how effective he is as the every-man with something to hide. This move is worth seeing solely on his performance. I hope and pray that he gets some major roles in the near future.
The Good: Brian fucking Cox as the bitter old man Mr. Kreeg. I mean he is Brian Cox, he is pretty much gold in whatever he is in. I first saw him chill me to the bone as Hannibal Lecter and he's continued to deliver ever since. He is really restricted in what he can do with this character but he milks the shit out of it by being a complete asshole for 15 minutes. And his story isn't bad either. We've all seen a movie where some angry old man gets what he deserves from some supernatural force(think Creepshow) and there will always be a place in my heart for that.
And The Bad: The musical score. I had to look up on IMDB who was responsible for this and it was a guy who is new to the game named Douglas Pipes. I guess I can't hold it against him. His only other big title is Monster House and I can't remember if that was decent or not but whatever he did with this film he fucked it up. I was glad that after the first five minutes the movie was so engaging that I forgot about the soundtrack. Maybe horror just isn't his strong suit. Either way it doesn't work. Another bad would have to be Anna Paquin's story. Not to say she's a bad actress, in fact her character is completely adorable in this film, it's just her story in the movie is the weakest. All in all I feel it was more of an excuse to get some T&A in an otherwise ass-less film. And T&A isn't bad at all but c'mon, this isn't a fucking Troma film. It stands good on it's own without an excuse to have some ass in it.
Well that's about it. It was a very very decent film, I'd go as far as saying amazing if you're in the right atmosphere. I hope they stick with the early October release date because this movie would kill with an entire month to eat away at. If you're a fan of this time of year, or horror, or of just having a fun time at the movies I doubt you'll be disappointed.
If you use this please call me Johnny From The House On Haunted Hill.
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I want to see this!!!
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Sounds like the new "creepshow".
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and "adorable" is a good word for Anna Paquin.
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I've heard rumors that the date was being pushed back to 2008 and I really hope that's not the case. This is exactly the kind of film I'd kill to see on Halloween. The trailer looked great and it's got an awesome cast, count me in!
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Right down to the same dude doing the score!Why is it Trick 'R' Treat and not Trick Or Treat? or am I missing something obvious!?
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kickass. thanks for the early review dude
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Is this a remake?
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Nice trailer and cast. Looks really good.
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Love Halloween and between this movie and 30 Days of Night it should be a fun season.
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It's called "having a penis".
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hmmmm, my interest just dipped down a little....lol...though i gotta give em props, it doesnt look cheap and low budget like their other movies so maybe this is a sign they're moving on to "real" movies?
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Oscar winners just don't do that sort of thing, unless it's for a movie with a title like "The Painful Quiet of Solitude" or something. Gotta love Anna Paquin.
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This description of the atmosphere has me almost drooling. I always want to get that "feeling" back at Halloween-time, like I did as a kid, and nothing ever does it for me. Glad to have a kid on the way, that might eventually bring it back! And one MINOR quibble I always had w/ Carpenter's classic, Halloween, is the lack of fall leaves everywhere. There are some in a few scenes but for the most part, it looks like summertime. I know this is such a terrible nit-pick, but when I think of Halloween, I think orange and yellow leaves absolutely covering lawns and in huge piles on every curb. What a dork!
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This films has had positive buzz for awhile.Bloody Disgusting and here have said its great in there advanced reviews and the trailer looks very nightmare before christmas/creepshow-E.
But WHENS THE OFFICIAL RELEASE,
October or 2008? -
nothing tops the deliberate awfulness of troma. The fact that they are still in business is amazing, and something to be admired.
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You call that a review?!! That was a review of the friggin trailer you dumbass plant. Let us know when you get out of the third grade and you can spell.
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awful, awful crap. Predictable, uninspired dreck. It really was torture porn at its lowest level.
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Um...Dylan Baker has had major roles in TONS of movies and TV shows. Pay attention sometime, you moron.
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Trick or treat indeed.
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Kinda dug those old Hammer/AI films, like Dr. Terror's House Of Horrors and the original Tales From The Crypt, with all those great British horror actors like Cushing, Lee and Gough. This looks like fun, although the trailer featuring the ghoulie crawling on the ceiling, out of sight of its victim, is a little played out.
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This one is looking like lots of fun!
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Back on to fixing that mess of a film they called Superman Returns with a kick ass sequel on an epic grand scale. If Singer and Dougherty would just get to the basics of an awesome Superman vs supervillan story (have the supervillan kill the little superboy ,it'll really piss supes off) he could pull a Nolan on us and have the fans back in boatloads. Singer promised us an awesome "Wrath of Khan" type sequel and damn it I want it now. It's sad that a huge Superman fan like myself has to look to Smallville for joy. Smallville's got Bizzaro. As far as Trick r Treat goes I hope it's good and scary and makes a ton so we can get past the torture porn genre there calling horror lately.
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Hey guys I was at the same screeing the other night, I wish I could be so eliquent on a review but I ended up doing a play by play.
First off let me say DO NOT go into this movie thinking its going to set the bar for new horror movies. But go into it as a good old fashion horror Halloween movie.
Seeing as its not really HALLOWEEN now, I wasn't really in the Halloweenie type mode haha but it was still a great movie. There are 4 stories basically wrapped up in one movie. It basically starts off at the end and works its way to the beginning, only to end up at the end again haha
The movie starts off with a couple coming back from the towns Halloween party. The girlfriend has to end up cleaning up the front yard of all the Halloween props and ends up bitting the dust as the first person killed. The boyfriend comes out to find her hung up like a scarecrow all cut up.
The story continues off with Dylan Baker's character coming home to see Brett Kelly (the fat kid from Bad Santa) stealing his candy and breaking his pumpkins. So he sits him down to talk to him about Halloween, all the while feeding him candy that he poisoned. Well long story short, he kills off the kid and ends up burying him, along with a few other kids, in his back yard. Theres some good points of comedy in here as well, as Baker's son keeps yelling at him to come carve pumpkins while hes busy with the bodies. On a side note Brian Cox's character Mr. Kreeg, lives next door and yells at him to keep it down (more on that later).
Next scene it cuts to earlier in the night, with Anna Paquin's character Laurie, with her sister and friends getting costumes at the Halloween store. They basically are looking for guys to come to their party, but Anna still isn't to sure about it, seeing as shes a virgin. They end up leaving her alone to find someone in town, as the rest of the girls find they're own way to the party. So she walks around the towns party just basically looking for someone to come with her.
They cut to a back alley with, slowly showing different couples getting freaky with each other. They come up with a girl dressed as a damsel and another man dressed in a black cloak and a black mask. They're going at it until the girl looks down and notices theres a lot of blood on her, and looks back up at the man in black to find out that he has vampire teeth. She runs for help, going into the crowd, yelling for help, only to be ignored as people think shes just in costume, and drunk. So finally the vampire catches up to her, only to end up killing her, and leaving her on the street; made up to look like she was passed out drunk.
We goto the next story with 4 kids going around town collecting pumpkins from people to take to the scene of an old ghost story. The story goes, 30 years ago, there was a school bus that drove 8 kids back and forth to school. Special needs kids that the parents were getting sick of having to take care of. So one Halloween on the way to school, the parents paid the bus driver to take the kids to an old abandoned rock quarry to drive them into a lake. He has them chained into the seats, but one of them gets free only to drive the bus off the cliff himself. Supposedly no one survived. So back to the kids, they end up at this house with a girl thats way to much into Halloween, she has 30+ pumpkins in her front yard, made her own witch costume, very nerdy type. They get her to come with them to help put the pumpkins up, to show respect for the kids that died. Long story short they all end up disappearing, leaving the nerdy girl to wonder what happened to them. She walks up and find the bus halfway in the water, and the other 4 kids costumes and blood. But no bodies. She reaches for one of the masks and a hand grabs at her. The kids start chasing her, finally making her trip and fall, knocking herself out. As she comes to, she sees the kids standing around her, she tries to get up and run but finds out with was just the 4 other kids playing a trick on her. They finally calm her down, only to hear weird noises and moaning coming from the bus. They leave the nerdy girl and find out that the kids in the bus are alive and looking for revenge. So one by one they take of the 4 kids, as they run back to the elevator that took them down in the first place. They come up to the nerdy girl only to find that she locked the door and ends up leaving them down there, to get killed off by the bus kids.
The next scene it cuts back to Anna Paquin, walking down a wooded path to the party her sisters are at, only to be caught by the vampire that was there earlier. It shows him biting her and cuts to the party. A body wrapped in the same cap that Anna was wearing gets dropped in the middle of the party. Anna's sister walks up to it to find that its the vampire wrapped up in it. As Anna walks up to the wrest of the group they act as if nothings wrong. The vampire keeps asking them to help him. Anna's friend walks over to pull open his mouth, pulling out his fake vampire teeth, and pulling off his mask to show that it was Dylan Baker's character dressed up. So slowly he looks around an notices all the guys at the party have been killed off; and slowly one by one the girls there start turning into werewolves. It turns out that the virgin that Anna's sister was talking about earlier, was being a virgin for her first kill. So she gets on top of Dylan Baker, and transforms, only to eat his heart.
The final scene cuts to back to Brian Cox character Mr. Kreeg, scaring away some kids trying to get some candy from his house. He takes their candy and walks back inside where we find him burning old pictures and watching infomercials. They starts to eat one of the candy bars only to find out it taste horrible. He then hears his dog barking in the back yard, and this is were it cuts to the scene with Dylans character in the backyard burying the bodies. All the while something is watching him from outside the house, which turns out to be the freaky looking thing on the poster for the movie. He has someone knocking on the front door again, and goes to the front door only to see that there are hundreds of pumpkins in his front yard. His dog is barking at something in his house and chases it upstairs. So Brian Cox gets a shotgun that his has over the fireplace and goes upstairs to a bedroom only to find another pumpkin; which starts shooting flames out the top, lighting up the room to show writing all over the wall. With the saying "trick r treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat." As hes looking at the writing the creature reaches from under the bed and slices his ankle. He slowly crawls out from under the bed as Mr. Kreeg fires his shotgun, only to have him disappear from the room back downstairs. He follows him to the stairs, and ends up slipping from candy all over the floor. As hes getting up at the base of the stairs he has to fight off the creature. Theres some really good humor points with Brian Cox character. Its real hard to put what happened into words. But he ends up shooting the *beep* out of him, only to have him come back to life. The creature tries to stab him with a sharp lollipop, but ends up hitting the candy bar from earlier that Cox didn't finish. So the creature eats its, and happily leaves, I'm assuming because he got something good to eat.
So it cuts to later with Cox's character answering the door, all bandaged up, giving out handfuls of candy to the kids. He See's the creature outside watching him, and they see the couple from the beginning of the movie walking back to their house. They blow of the pumpkins, and the girlfriend stayed out, so the creature ends up going after and killing her. It cuts Cox's fireplace, and one of the pictures inside burning is a picture of all the kids from the school bus, and the bus driver, which turns out to be Cox. The doorbell rings one more time, he goes to answer it, only to have all the kids from the buss there on his doorstep.
Thats where it end lol
I know this is a real *beep* kinda telling of the story. And yea I left of some little details here and there, but this is the major plot of the movie. I wanted to give a more detailed telling, but Jesus I'm tired and I don't have that kinda time lol
Bottom line is this is a pretty cool movie. Especially seeing it for free. I would definitely say this is a great date movie for Halloween. I know my girlfriend and most of the other girls were jumping. It has a very much fredy vs jason type of humor to it too, but remember this is a HARD R rating, a lot of gore haha
So this should make a great Halloween movie, I wanna see a sequel people, so go and support this movie -
Damn thing doesnt let me split up the paragraphs. If you want heres a link to the IMDB page, i posted it there as well.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0862856/board/thread/83116800 -
The Bad - too much T&A... excuse me?
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I stopped reading after the idiot spelled "too" wrong twice in the same sentence.
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Which one are you talking about? Mine or Johnnys? And which "too" are your talking about?
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unmitigated=inexcusable. But other than that I agree with you. Except it didn't unsettle me. Aside from making me get off my arse and go to the pub
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Hell yeah if one of the negative things in it was T&A. Ill be there to watch it a Fantastic Fest later next month.
http://tinyurl.com/pv8do
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