Despite being delayed for two years and having only a limited number of screenings at film festivals, the film received positive reviews and has since garnered a cult following.[5]
Plot
The film takes place on Halloween night in the fictional town of Warren Valley, Ohio. The plot follows a nonlinear narrative, with characters crossing paths throughout the film. At the center of the story is Sam, a peculiar trick-or-treater in an orange footie pajama costume, who appears to enforce the "rules" of Halloween.
Opening
In the opening scene, Emma and her Halloween-loving husband Henry return home after a celebratory night. Emma (who hates Halloween) blows out their jack-o'-lantern before midnight against Henry's advice. As Henry falls asleep in the house, Emma tears down the decorations; but is then ambushed and murdered by an unseen assailant. Hours later, Henry discovers Emma's mutilated corpse on display with the decorations.
Principal
Charlie vandalizes jack-o'-lanterns and steals candy from unattended bowls. When school principal Steven Wilkins catches him red-handed, Wilkins offers Charlie a candy bar while lecturing him on the importance of respecting Halloween rules and traditions. Shortly after, Charlie begins vomiting violently. As Charlie dies, Wilkins reveals that he laced the candy with cyanide.
Wilkins attempts to bury Charlie in his backyard along with the body of another victim, but is continually interrupted by trick-or-treaters (including Sam), his young Halloween-loving son Billy, his cantankerous elderly neighbor Mr. Kreeg, and Kreeg’s dog Spite. The other victim turns out to still be alive, and Wilkins beats him to death with a shovel to keep him quiet.
Returning indoors, Wilkins notices Kreeg seemingly in distress but brushes it off before something attacks Kreeg. Wilkins guides Billy downstairs to carve a jack-o'-lantern. As a twist, the "jack-o'-lantern" they are about to carve is Charlie's severed head.
Halloween School Bus Massacre
A group of teenage trick-or-treaters—Macy, Chip, Schrader, and Sara—meet devout Halloween traditionalist Rhonda. Macy leads the group to a flooded quarry and recounts the urban legend of the "Halloween School Bus Massacre".
The parents of eight mentally disabled children bribed their bus driver to dispose of them. Things go awry when a child dressed as Dracula gets loose and the bus is driven off a cliff into the quarry. The children all drowned, and the driver (the only survivor) was never heard from again. No one tried to find the bus as the people didn't want it found.
Macy leaves eight jack-o'-lanterns by the lake as a tribute to the deceased. The group splits up, leaving Rhonda and Chip behind. Rhonda gets separated and is then pursued by horrifying figures, which turn out to be the other teens in disguise—a prank planned by Macy. Realizing that the trick has gone too far, Schrader tries to comfort the hurt and terrified Rhonda while a bitter Macy kicks a jack-o'-lantern into the water. The actual drowned children, now risen as undead, emerge from the lake and attack the teens. Rhonda abandons the rest to their deaths as revenge for their prank. As she leaves with a wagon of jack-o'-lanterns, Rhonda encounters Sam and exchanges a respectful nod with him.
Surprise Party
Laurie, a self-conscious 22-year-old from out of town, joins her older sister Danielle and friends Maria and Janet for Halloween. The girls select princess costumes, while Laurie dresses up as "Little Red Riding Hood". A devout Halloween traditionalist, Laurie misses trick-or-treating and is uncaring of her friends' and sister's talks of dates.
While the other girls pick up dates and head to a bonfire party in the woods, Laurie stays and enjoys the town festival. Later, on the way to meet up with her friends, she is attacked by a man in a vampire costume.
Laurie arrives at the girls' bonfire with the injured and frightened "vampire" who turns out to be a disguised Steven Wilkins.
The girls shed their clothing and skin, revealing their werewolf bodies. Having chosen Wilkins as her first kill as he truly deserves it, Laurie also transforms and kills Wilkins before devouring him. Sam watches as the werewolves feast on their deceased dates.
Sam
Kreeg, a curmudgeonly Halloween hater, dresses up his dog to scare trick-or-treaters off his doorstep. As the night proceeds, Kreeg encounters increasingly unusual phenomena: The front of the house is egged; the lawn is filled with ornate jack-o'-lanterns; and the hallways and ceiling are scrawled with Halloween and Samhain greetings.
Sam ambushes and attacks Kreeg. In their struggle, Kreeg manages to unmask his assailant, whose head resembles a grotesque hybrid of a skull and a jack-o'-lantern. Kreeg shoots Sam several times with a shotgun, knocking him down. However, Sam incapacitates and corners Kreeg who fails to get Wilkins to help him.
When Sam tries to stab Kreeg, he instead hits a candy bar which had fallen on the old man's lap. With this, Kreeg accidentally "gives" the candy to Sam, completing the tradition of handing out candies on Halloween. Satisfied, Sam spares a confused Kreeg and departs.
Meanwhile, photographs burning in the fireplace reveal that Kreeg was the missing driver from the School Bus Massacre.
Conclusion
A heavily-bandaged Kreeg gives candy to trick-or-treaters and witnesses other people upholding Halloween traditions. Billy sits on his father's porch while handing out candy and enjoying himself, Rhonda casually pulls along her wagon filled with jack-o'-lanterns, and Laurie and her friends drive by while laughing to each other.
After Emma and Henry arrive at home, Sam sees Emma prematurely extinguishing the jack-o'-lantern and moves in to kill her as punishment.
Kreeg answers another knock at his door as the scene becomes animated as he is surrounded and brutally torn apart by the zombie children from the bus.
Season's Greetings is an animated short created by Trick 'r Treat writer and director Michael Dougherty in 1996, and was the precursor of the film.[6] The film featured Sam as a little boy dressed in orange footy pajamas with his burlap sack head covering, as he is being stalked by a stranger on Halloween night. The short was released as a DVD extra on the original release for Trick 'r Treat and was aired on FEARnet in October 2013 as part of a 24-hour Trick 'r Treat marathon on Halloween.[7]
Writing
"The Halloween School Bus Massacre" segment initially took place in a graveyard and had the kids luring the girl to play with them. It was going to be revealed that they were all ghosts and that the girl had forgotten she was one of them. Dougherty ultimately had to rewrite the whole segment because he felt that the twist of someone being dead all along had become an overused trope.[8]
Filming
Trick 'r Treat was filmed on location in Vancouver, British Columbia. Originally slated for an October 5, 2007, theatrical release, it was announced in September 2007 that the film had been pushed back. After many festival screenings, it was released on home media in 2009.[3]
Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures released the film direct-to-DVD and on Blu-ray in North America on October 6, 2009, in the UK on October 26, and in Australia on October 28. Shout! Factory released a "Collector's Edition" Blu-ray on October 9, 2018, with all extras from previous DVD/Blu-ray releases included as well as new extra content.[13]
Marketing
Comic books
DC Comics partner Wildstorm Comics had planned to release a four-issue adaptation of Trick 'r Treat written by Marc Andreyko and illustrated by Fiona Staples, with covers by Michael Dougherty, Breehn Burns and Ragnar.[14] The series was originally going to be released weekly in October 2007, ending on Halloween, but the series was pushed back due to the film's backlisting. The four comics were instead released as a graphic novel adaptation in October 2009.[15]Legendary Comics set the second Trick 'r Treat comic book, titled Trick 'r Treat: Days of the Dead, for an October 2015 release date,[16] and features Arts of Artist Fiona Staples and Stephen Byrne.[17] The comic was released alongside the graphic novel tie-in of Dougherty's Krampus.[18]
Reception
Box office
As of October 26, 2023, Trick 'r Treat grossed $27,909 in the United Kingdom.[4]
Critical response
On review aggregatorRotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 83% based on 35 reviews, with an average rating of 7.40/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "A deftly crafted tribute to Halloween legends, Trick 'r' Treat [sic] hits all the genre marks with gusto and old-fashioned suspense."[19]
Dread Central gave it five out of five stars, stating: "Trick 'r Treat ranks alongside John Carpenter's Halloween as traditional October viewing and I can't imagine a single horror fan that won't fall head over heels in love with it."[20] The film earned ten out of ten from Ryan Rotten of ShockTilYouDrop.com.[21]
IGN called it a "very well-crafted Halloween horror tribute" and "a scary blast", rating it a score of eight out of ten.[22]Bloody Disgusting ranked the film ninth in their list of the "Top 20 Horror Films of the Decade", calling it "so good that its lack of a theatrical release borders on the criminal."[23] Jeffrey M. Anderson of Common Sense Media rated the film four stars out of five, stating that "rarely work as well as this one does, with its brisk pacing and excellent casting, and its alluring combination of prankish humor and sincere dread." He also noted that the stories are "admirable how beautifully [that] twist and flow and snap together, most with little tricks and twist endings that reference other parts of the movie."[24] Jim Vorel of Paste Magazine praised the characters' "different social castes and age groups" and, overall, called it "one of the most purely entertaining horror films of the 2000s."[25]
Dougherty announced in October 2009 that he was planning a sequel,[28] but later stated that there was "no active development nor an attempt at a pitch."[29] A sequel was announced in October 2013,[30] but there was a change in Legendary's management. Dougherty has continued to express interest in a sequel but said the film stands on its own.[31]
In October 2022, Dougherty revealed that he was in "active development" of a sequel with Legendary Pictures, although the film had not been officially greenlit yet.[32] In October 2023, Dougherty confirmed that several screenplay drafts were complete, confirming that progress had only recently continued due to the end of the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike. He also clarified that he hoped to be looking at budgetary and scheduling concerns afterward; while also stating: "I mean, I love all of our favorite horror franchise characters as much as any of us, but not all of them are great. And I know we've grown to love even the lesser chapters of our favorite horror series. There's always a cheese value to them, but if I'm gonna do a sequel, I want it to be as good if not better than the original, and good things take time. The last thing I would want is to see Trick ‘r Treat Part 9: Sam Goes to Space, you know? Although that does have potential, I will say."[33][34]
^Warner Bros Pictures did released the film but the logo doesn't appear in the film,the “Distributed by" logo Variation appears in the end, and the logo doesn't appear in the main trailer.
