Michael Dougherty, writer and director of the much-delayed Halloween-themed horror movie Trick 'r Treat, told SCI FI Wire that he's been delighted with the rapturous response the film has received in preview screenings--and I'd have to say I can see why after watching it on Thursday.
Speaking after a screening of the film in Hollywood's famed Grauman's Chinese Theatre complex on Oct. 23, Dougherty said, "I'm completely blown away by the response. It's kind of everything I'd hoped for and more, oddly enough. ... They're really getting it. I'm suprised and flattered by that."
Trick 'r Treat is a throwback to the funny-scary horror movies of the past, like An American Werewolf in London and Tales From the Crypt, as well as EC Comics and the Twilight Zone TV show and film and even the black humor of Edward Gorey and Charles Addams. Set on a fateful Halloween night in a small Midwestern town, the movie interweaves four separate narratives that touch on each other.
So why is it taking so long for Warner Brothers to release the film? Finished roughly a year ago, the movie has sat on the studio's shelf while previously scheduled release dates have come and gone. The movie's screened in only a few places, notably this month's 2008 Screamfest Film Festival in Los Angeles. (Legendary Films produced the movie.)
Dougherty, ever the diplomat, shrugs his shoulders when asked the source of the hangup. "I don't know," he says. "I don't know. It's like, ask the magic 8-ball, you know?"
Drew McWeeny, the screenwriter and Ain't It Cool News contributor who hosted last night's screening, theorized that the studio may not know how to market a movie that combines humor with horror.
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An early poster showed an Oct. 5, 2007, release date.
After watching the film, I can see that its sly tone, intertwined storylines and multiple characters might flummox marketers used to selling more straightforward teen fare.
Which is a shame. Trick 'r Treat is a delight--funny, suspenseful, scary in the right parts--horrifying even--touching at times and always surprising and original. It's a movie made by a filmmaker with a deep love for Halloween and old-fashioned storytelling, smart enough to tweak the genre's conventions while honoring them and weird enough to take his horror just those few steps beyond the expected into shocking and perverse.
The four stories are preceded by an introduction in which a Halloween-obsessed young man (Battlestar Galactica's Tahmoh Penikett) argues with his wife (Leslie Bibb), who hates the holiday.
That leads into the first story, involving four young women who have come from the big city to the small town to find a party in the woods and seek out suitable dates. Laurie (Anna Paquin), dressed as Little Red Riding Hood, finds herself stalked by a dark hooded figure with a taste for blood.
In the second story, a group of young trick-or-treaters, led by Marcy (Britt McKillip), makes a night pilgrimage to a rock quarry, site of a Halloween-night disaster 30 years earlier that has become an urban legend. A prank aimed at the socially inept Rhonda (Samm Todd) doesn't go quite as planned.
In the third story, a bully gets his comeuppance at the hands of a creepy school principal (Dylan Baker) who isn't all that he seems.
And in the film's fourth and perhaps most effective sequence, the reclusive Mr. Kreeg (Brian Cox) wants nothing more than to be left alone in his ramshackle house. But one Halloween prankster won't give him any peace.
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Thirty years ago, this school bus figured in a horrific disaster in Michael Dougherty's Trick 'r Treat.
The sequences are deftly woven together with flashbacks, and at various points in the movie characters explain the history and rules of Halloween: Wear a costume. Hand out candy. Never blow out a jack-o'-lantern. And always check your candy.
Connecting all the stories is the diminutive figure of Sam (Quinn Lord), dressed in orange flannel footie pajamas, wearing a burlap hood with button eyes.
"To me it's more of a Halloween movie than a horror movie, if that makes any sense," Dougherty says. "It's an odd mixed candy bag of laughs and scares and morbid humor. ... I don't think you can classify it solely as a horror film."
We can say it's destined to become a Halloween classic. If only it gets released. --Patrick Lee, News Editor
