Tricks Are Treats and Treats Trick in 'Trick 'r Treat'

I grew up in Hackensack, New Jersey. My house stood one block from Clinton Place, a street locally renowned for the fervor with which its residents devote themselves to their Halloween decorations. Skeletons hang from trees, hearses park in front yards, and speakers concealed in bushes play endless loops of “Monster Mash.” On Halloween night, droves of trick-or-treaters and sightseers from around the state descend on Clinton Place. I, in my Supergirl costume and braces, was routinely scared shitless. I loved it.

Halloween is, after all, approaching quickly; it’s time to ready your Netflix queue with films that attempt to recapture that distinct feeling of Halloweens past. While there’s plenty of Eli Roth-curated torture porn to choose from, you could always rewatch “The Exorcist” and speculate as to whether Linda Blair’s head would spin counterclockwise in the Southern Hemisphere. And, of course, there’s no shortage of family-friendly fare for the holiday—“The Nightmare Before Christmas,” say, or even “Hocus Pocus.”  But what I recommend to you is not a Halloween film for kids, but a Halloween film for former kids: Michael Dougherty’s “Trick ‘r Treat” (2007).

The brilliance of “Trick ‘r Treat” lies in its wonderful, primal blend of fear and excitement. It is slick, clever, and fast-paced, with an all-important sense of humor about itself—a dark comedy for those of us who prefer the Michael Myers of the “Austin Powers” variety.The movie was subjected to what barely qualifies as a public release, condemned straight-to-video with criminally little exposure outside of festival screenings. Nevertheless, the movie’s cult popularity has gradually built up momentum, and a sequel is rumored to be in the works.

The film is composed of four interlocking stories. The best of these stars Dylan Baker as the town’s sinister school principal. Baker is most recognizable from his role as a pedophile in 1998’s “Happiness,” and has apparently heartily accepted the creepy typecasting that was bound to result from that part. In another subplot, Anna Paquin anchors a delicious revision of the tale of Little Red Riding Hood.

The picture boasts a number of startling, satisfying reversals, which is especially refreshing when one considers that most feature films can now be extrapolated entirely from their trailers. Without resorting to too much unnecessary gore, “Trick ‘r Treat” treads where lesser horror films dare not—your children’s candy is poisoned, it suggests, and murderers and sex offenders freely roam the streets of your own neighborhood.

Aesthetically, “Trick ‘r Treat” draws much inspiration from comic books, which it visually mimics in its credit sequences and highly stylized conception of a macabre suburbia. This choice should come as no surprise, considering writer-director Dougherty’s background—he scripted both “Superman Returns” and “X2”—and the comic genre dovetails thematically with the film’s focus on youthful subjects.

As adults, we tend to forget the element of danger inherent in the former part of “trick or treat”—the phrase is, after all, a kind of social contract. Sam, the film’s most iconic character, is there to remind us of exactly this. Dougherty first conceived of Sam while an undergraduate at New York University, long before the production of “Trick ‘r Treat.” A demonic trick-or-treater in dirty orange pajamas, he exacts violent revenge on anyone foolish enough to violate the rules of Halloween. He’ll make you think twice about smashing another pumpkin.

What makes a good scary movie? A few buckets of red-dyed corn syrup (or, in Hitchcock’s case, Bosco Chocolate Syrup) and a buxom corpse? Well, raise your expectations. “Trick ‘r Treat” will remind you of everything you forgot to be afraid of.

—Columnist Molly O. Fitzpatrick can be reached at fitzpat@fas.harvard.edu