By the time I finally sat down and watched Trick ‘r Treat (2007), I had been living in hyped anticipation for it for close to two years. Since first premiering and earning acclaim on the festival circuit, the more horror-centric corner of the web had been abuzz singing its praises, promising what seemed to be the perfect confluence of horror iconography.
Initially, I expected a wide-release. Trick ‘r Treat posters plastered across the sides of buses. Breakfast cereal tie-ins. The whole Halloween experience, as it were. Instead, the holiday came and went. No Trick ‘r Treat release and certainly no merchandise. Time passed and my already excited curiosity grew to epic proportions as I began to wonder if I’d ever find a way to see this seemingly fabled gift to horror fans.
When it was finally released unceremoniously to the home video market in 2009, I was first in line to pick up a copy. As impossibly high as my hyperbolic expectations were, I couldn’t help but feel confident that this movie would somehow meet them. And, much to my surprise as I watched it later that night, my expectations weren’t simply met, they were completely blown away.
A celebration of all things Halloween, Trick ‘r Treat is a night-long interconnected web of spooky stories comprised of a talented cast and put together by people who adore the horror genre. Stemming from a short, animated student film from Michael Dougherty called Season’s Greetings, perhaps the biggest contribution that Trick ‘r Treat makes to the horror genre is Sam, the spritely, candy-seeking imp with the orange onesie and a pumpkin-shaped head hidden under a burlap mask. Sam is the keeper of the holiday, overseeing the spooky proceedings and doling out comeuppance when it’s required.
The film is a veritable buffet of All Hallow’s Eve’s deep well of folklore, employing murderers, pranksters, ghosts, werewolves, Jack-‘o-lanterns, and more in its stead to traverse a single night under the haunted moon of October 31st. Every intricately woven narrative path serves to strengthen the eerie, dream-like mythos driving the night, maintaining that unique blend of fear, excitement, and fun that only Halloween can harness.
Whether it’s the sepia-toned tale of the doomed school bus or the home invasion assault on crotchety old Mr. Kreeg, Trick ‘r Treat delivers fantastic set pieces, perfectly executed from the ground up. Written and directed by Michael Dougherty, it’s clear that his vision for the film was baked on the page, making for a reading experience that is easy to visualize. With an incredible sense of drive and pace, it’s no wonder the finished film and its many intersecting characters work as well together as they do.
While so many scenes stand out as worthy effects-based sequences worth exploring, including a full-on werewolf transformation scene, it’s the opening of the film that stands as a simplified start-to-finish short film representing the thematics and narrative drive of Trick ‘r Treat as a whole. Concerning a couple arriving home after a night of partying, this bite-sized sequence offers a warning and a standard that the remainder of the film will uphold: never disrespect the spirit of Halloween.
Mirroring the page but altering the dynamic between the characters in interesting ways, not to mention leading to a somewhat different conclusion, the scene is a perfect example of how ideas evolve from page to screen, molding to the tone and narrative needs of the eventual film. At times lighthearted, at others deeply disturbing, Sam’s introduction in the film as seen out of order from the end of the night, sets the stage in reverse and provides an incredibly memorable sequence to boot.
THE SCENE
Emma and Henry arrive home in costume and Emma moves to blow out the jack-‘o-lantern in front of her house. Henry attempts to stop her but she insists, saying that the night is over. He comes on to her, but she decides to take down their outdoor decorations before heading inside. Meanwhile, someone small in stature watches her from across the street, hurrying over to the yard and hiding unnoticed. She removes the sheets from the ghosts in their yard and starts to collect the hanging limbs from their trees. She notices someone across the street staring at her, growing worried. The boy hops into a car full of teenagers, speeding off and alleviating her fears. She removes another sheet and something leaps from the storage box, pulling her into the sheet and slicing her throat with a partially eaten lollipop. Later, Henry heads to the yard to look for Emma. He comes upon a lit up sheet and removes it, uncovering a horrifying Halloween decoration mounted with Emma’s bloody head, her mouth forced open to grotesque proportions by the oversized lollipop embedded there.
THE SCRIPT
Excerpt taken from the script ‘Trick or Treat’ written by Michael Dougherty.
THE SCREEN
BLACKNESS.
Pierced by flickering candlelight. It grows brighter, until the orange scowl of a JACK O’LANTERN fills the frame.
The words on the page come to spooky life onscreen in an identical opening shot, the grinning face of a jack-o’-lantern breaking as the darkness pulls away from it like a curtain. The beacon of Halloween sits on a leaf laden street set before a picket fence, presenting an image that defines suburban Halloween. While the script moves forward, the camera pulls back to reveal someone pulling a wagon with another jack-o’-lantern and a car full of giggling teenagers, ensuring that the stage is set at the cross-section of the night’s various intertwining stories right from the start.
Emma and Henry approach the gate as scripted, the only difference being that instead of being dressed like the Bride of Frankenstein, Emma is wearing a clunky robot costume. Henry is described as being a mad doctor, but in the film he appears to be some sort of medieval warrior. The costume change more strongly suggests Emma’s disconnect from the holiday, her discomfort, and annoyance regarding her chosen attire obvious from the moment she steps on screen.
SOMEONE’S POV:
Watching from across the street, half hidden behind a tree.
In the film, the onlooker’s vision is slightly obscured through some sort of face covering, their breathing short and curious. The couple converses just as they do on the page, despite some slight tweaks in dialogue. Primarily, Emma is more playful, coming on to Henry as she grabs his ass. This stands in stark contrast to the exhausted, somewhat bothered version of the woman who appears in the movie, clearly over the holiday, its customs, and the ever waning night.
In the film, this is best represented by the added exchange where Henry suggests “ancient customs” are at play and Emma responds with, “Honey, this is Halloween, not Chanukah”.
The script doesn’t make note of it, but when Emma bends down and blows out the candle, the image cuts back to the POV. The breathing falters, as though gasping, and then turns to a steady pace as the POV begins to move. This is a bit premature when compared to the page, but follows suit with how it is written several paragraphs later: It keeps low, scurrying across the street to the front gate.
While this culminates on the page with Emma and Henry entering the house, the film keeps them outside on the front porch. This is when Henry hits on his wife, grinning as she bends over. Comparing this to the conversation that happens in the living room in the script, most of it plays out in the same way. Emma wants to take the decorations down and Henry wants to “play doctor”. Ultimately, the same conclusion is reached, again with the Emma in the script more playfully committing to what’ll come after the yard work, saying as she gooses Henry once more, “I’ll let you do a full exam later”.
In the film, he’s instructed to “put in the tape” which leads to some distracting audio later in the scene. In the script, the ambient sounds of the scene are created by a sound effects tape that is constantly playing from upstairs: SCARY SOUND EFFECTS play from speakers set up in the windows. The script even makes a note that, Someone really loves the holiday.
The film distinguishes the dynamic between the two people overtly throughout, most notably when Henry leaves Emma who sighs staring out at the yard filled with decorations, and mutters, “I hate Halloween.” In the script, Henry finds himself upstairs, stumbling down a dark hall and startled by EERIE LAUGHTER which turns to RATTLING CHAINS only to discover that the sounds belong to the sound effects tape. The film simply follows him as he puts in the “Nature Special” tape into his VCR, less interested in building tension and more concerned with setting up the plot point.
The next scripted sequence finds Emma in the front yard, just as she is in the film. This portion is nearly identical in both formats, expertly building tension and providing a window into the terrifying power of the imagination on Halloween night. Emma walks between the ghosts and notices a TALL FIGURE across the street staring at her. In the script he is wearing a red robe and a DEVIL MASK but in the film the man is dressed in black with a white, expressionless mask splashed with blood.
The image cuts back and forth between Emma’s increasingly nervous actions, tearing sheets off of the wooden crosses erected in the front yard and pulling plastic limbs from the trees, and the man standing motionless across the road. Every subsequent time he’s shown, he seems a bit closer, his unmoving stare growing in perceived ominousness and Emma’s worried expression intensifying. She can barely focus on what she’s doing, reaching for the next sheet, waiting for the man’s inevitable movement to break the mounting tension.
A car filled with teenagers pulls up and honks. The passenger door opens and MUSIC BLARES. The Devil climbs inside the car.
Relief washing over her, Emma grins in a medium close up. In the script, the innocuous teenagers drive away and she says, “trick or treat”. In the film, she says, “Happy Halloween”. Both deliver the same message as before: there’s a mysterious power to the night and those who occupy it. Where that power comes from and how it manifests is difficult to define, pin down or escape, as Emma will soon find out.
She walks up to another ghost, about to pull off its sheet— THE GHOST LUNGES AND WRAPS ITS ARMS AROUND EMMA!
In the film, several close-ups depict Emma removing the sheet. The screen flashes to the boards, the ghost’s sack head, and then to Emma once more, each appearing in the center of the frame for just a second or two, subverting the expectations that a scare was forthcoming. Instead, the film allows Emma a moment or two to calm down as she slaps a plastic arm out of her way and tosses the sheet haphazardly into a box.
The second the sheet connects with the cardboard, it rises back up in a furious mass as though adopting the form of the ghost it was made out to be all October long. It thrusts itself upon Emma, enveloping her in an attack masked by rippling white. The image cuts to Henry, in the script as it does the film, groggily waking up to the sounds of screams.
In the script, [Emma’s] cries blend with the shrieks and wails of the sound effects and in the film, they’re overtaken by the moans coming from the pornography tape playing on the small TV in front of his bed. The decision to move from a cassette tape of spooky sound effects to a VHS of recorded porn certainly serves to make the proceedings decidedly more adult.
THE GHOST PULLS EMMA CLOSE, and she sees that it’s holding a PUMPKIN LOLLIPOP with a large bite taken out so that it now has a very sharp edge.
Onscreen, the fight continues on outside in a series of close up shots as Emma struggles and the sheet flails, the unseen foe unleashing its chaos upon her under a mound of jutting white. In an unscripted addition, three trick-or-treaters pass by the house as the two under the sheet crash through the picket fence, blocking their path. It’s then that we see the scripted lollipop under the sheet as the attacker presses it against Emma’s neck. In a wide shot, the three trick-or-treaters watch as the thing under the sheet thrusts its arm forward, spraying and soaking the sheet in red. The three onlookers gasp and run away, perhaps chalking up the strange phenomena to the idiosyncrasies of the night and bowing to the whims of its power.
In the film, the image cuts to a wide shot of the thing under the sheet as it drags the dirty, bloody, mass back into the yard. The script jumps back to Henry who hears a THUD on the roof followed by tiny footsteps and a childlike GIGGLE. He wanders back outside looking for Emma and finds a CROWD OF PEOPLE gathering, staring at the house while a mother covers her son’s eyes. He looks and finds a horrific display atop his quaint home:
A COFFIN sits upright, propped up by plastic skeletons posed around it like morbid cherubs. Inside is Emma’s corpse, wrapped in pumpkin vines and orange lights.”
On her shoulders rests the jack-o’-lantern she blew out earlier, behind the eyes and grin of which is EMMA’S FACE. As scripted, she has been turned into a Halloween decoration, a horrifying yet eerily beautiful work of art.
The film forgoes the crowd of people, making the reveal more contained and personal. Instead of being propped up on the roof, Henry finds the strange display in the yard, amongst the other ghosts and limbs that had seemed so playful only hours before. He wanders through the decorations with uncertainty, passing a severed limb wearing a wedding ring glinting in the moonlight.
Finally, he comes to a ghost illuminated by orange light. Slowly, he removes the sheet, unearthing a terrifying monolith of gruesomeness. The cross which had previously bore a faux ghost has been strung up with orange bulbs while what’s left of his wife’s body lies sprawled about it. Some of her limbs are severed and her head is planted at the top of the thing, the large lollipop which had so recently been used to slice open her neck shoved into her open mouth, extending it far beyond capacity. This initial reveal is shown in a brief, canted angle as the twisted decoration juts up through the center of the frame while Henry stands hopelessly to the side, overcome by shock.
Bathed in the red and orange glow of his wife’s illuminated, mutilated form, he releases a disgusted, guttural scream and stumbles back. As in the script, Henry stares at the sight, baffled… fear slowly sinking in. After a few quick shots of blood dripping from her foot and hand, the camera moves in on Emma’s distorted face set against Henry’s horrified screams, the top row of her teeth visible under her outstretched lips as she turns into a comic panel.
The script, on the other hand, finishes the scene with a child’s small hand, sticky with blood relighting the candle of a second jack-o’-lantern so that it once again glows to life. Both accomplish the same end in many ways, carrying the viewer to a place of mysticism and wonder, a season laden with unspoken rules that carry consequences befitting the terrifying nature of the holiday.
And with that, Trick ‘r Treat begins.
THE BLOODY CONCLUSION
“The character of Sam really originated with my love for the holiday…” director Michael Dougherty said in the feature Tales of Folklore & Fright: Creating Trick ‘r Treat, “it was a really magical time of year, you know I grew up in Ohio and so it’s full-blown Halloween— the leaves change colors, the air gets crisp and cool, everything takes on a very serious and magical quality.”
Despite the near-incomprehensible levels of anticipation I was feeling when I finally caught up to Trick ‘r Treat, miraculously it did not disappoint. Not only that, it became the defining genre movie of the holiday, one of the movies I look forward to most when the trees change their colors and the air crisps up. It makes sense then that this feeling seemed to be the mantra surrounding the production.
“During preproduction, we collected hundreds and hundreds of dead leaves,” Michael Dougherty said in his commentary track for Trick ‘r Treat, describing how the crew had to create the look and feel of autumn in the pouring Vancouver rain of early winter. Tarps were set up above the actors’ heads in the opening sequence to collect the rain and the blood used had to be slow-boiled. As Michael Dougherty recalled, “we kept blood warmed throughout the night so we could get that steam effect.”
The sequence and film at large has an attention to detail that lends itself to multiple viewings while simultaneously creating an incredibly immersive experience. Not only does that mentality serve the narrative and thematics of the movie, whether it be in nuance or the literal bits of plot woven throughout the tapestry of stories, these subtleties place the viewer in the middle of the haunted night, carrying Halloween and all that goes with it into your living room regardless of the time of year.
While the opening story regarding a woman who disrespects the holiday and finds herself at the sharp end of a lollipop because of it may not be the film’s most epic or even entertaining adventure, it offers a perfect introduction to the remainder of the film’s runtime. A funny, creepy, and engaging window into Halloween and all of the trappings, rules, and possibilities that go along with it. From the page to the screen, the sequence serves as a thesis statement for what’s to come, carrying Michael Dougherty’s warm and haunting vision to spectacular life.
Maybe Trick ‘r Treat never got the big advertising budget, the branded lunchboxes, or the breakfast cereals, but regardless it was a gift to horror fans everywhere. All of these years later, its cult status continues to grow. Sam’s Halloween mascot status seems to mature every year and Spirit Halloween is Hellbent on realizing the wide-release style merchandising I always wished would have accompanied the film way back in 2007. It’s a movie that only gets better with age, every year solidifying itself as an essential part of the Halloween season, embedded as much in the spirit of the holiday as it is in the celebration.
Years of unreasonable expectation built the movie up in my mind to essentially be “Halloween, distilled”. And, despite my fears that the incredible hype might ruin Trick ‘r Treat before it ever reached my eyes, I’d say those expectations weren’t that far off in the end.
Hell, looking at the image of Sam, enjoying his lollipop and clutching his sack of candy, I’d say “Halloween” is as accurate a review of this movie as any person could possibly write. Well, that or “perfect”, but, then again, for all intents and purposes, the two are one in the same.
