Complete failure of a horror that actually has no "raison d'être" whatsoever because only three (I repeat THREE) people die throughout the entire film and two (again, I repeat, TWO) of these three deaths occur off-screen! I've seen Disney Pixar flicks where more characters died. By the way, that was a spoiler warning! What makes all this even worse is the fact that the basic premise actually holds quite a bit of potential and the opening sequences are even intriguingly mysterious and never seen before. A battle ax of a woman hires some men in clean white coats to take away her husband to the loony bin. Several years later – although later specified as exactly four – the man breaks out the asylum on Halloween night (in the lamest imaginable way by dressing up as an elderly woman) and returns homewards with exclusively vengeance on his mind. His evil hag of a wife, who in the meantime re-married the sleazy magician artist David Carradine, is not there on "the night he came home" (copyright John Carpenter's "Halloween") but the cute babysitter is looking after their chubby and unimaginably annoying son, who persists on playing lame pranks (and the bimbo babysitter persists on falling for them as well). It takes literally ages before anything remotely horror-related occurs. The film isn't exactly boring; it's just nothing like a horror/slasher effort. There are numerous pointless interludes to fill up the running time, like a complete narration of the Boy Who Cried Wolf fairy tale and the showing of a horror film within the film, something about Dracula reviving the Frankenstein monster, because two chicks are editing a film the babysitter slash actress starred in. It's not the least bit relevant; it's just another way to kill off a couple of minutes.
I sometimes really wondered if "Trick or Treats" was intended as a comedy, because certain parts are just so incredibly over-the-top and senseless, like the live news reporting from inside the asylum after the escape, but then again other parts as well as the acting performances are so sincere and straight-faced that I think we're supposed to take this rubbish seriously. The chubby 8-year-old amateur magician is literally, hands down, THE most annoying kid ever displayed on screen and, especially with the slow pacing in this film, you just know from the beginning that we won't have the pleasure of watching him die. "Trick or Treats" is a "Halloween" knock-off without any actual slashing going on. It's a lousy and boring movie, completely bloodless and without the slightest form of suspense. The supportive roles of Steve Railsbeck and David Carradine are completely wasted and did I tell you already this piece of junk hardly features any on screen bloodshed? Epic failure, that's what they call this sort of stuff these days on the Internet.
I sometimes really wondered if "Trick or Treats" was intended as a comedy, because certain parts are just so incredibly over-the-top and senseless, like the live news reporting from inside the asylum after the escape, but then again other parts as well as the acting performances are so sincere and straight-faced that I think we're supposed to take this rubbish seriously. The chubby 8-year-old amateur magician is literally, hands down, THE most annoying kid ever displayed on screen and, especially with the slow pacing in this film, you just know from the beginning that we won't have the pleasure of watching him die. "Trick or Treats" is a "Halloween" knock-off without any actual slashing going on. It's a lousy and boring movie, completely bloodless and without the slightest form of suspense. The supportive roles of Steve Railsbeck and David Carradine are completely wasted and did I tell you already this piece of junk hardly features any on screen bloodshed? Epic failure, that's what they call this sort of stuff these days on the Internet.