Trick Or Treat

It's pretty hard to watch a horror movie with headphones on in the dark.   When I say hard I really mean scary.  In order to not disturb my roommate, I have to sometimes watch things on my computer using headphones.  Not only am I physically closer to the spooky imagery on the screen, but all the noises are amplified and feel that much closer,  In addition, this record breaking hot temperature has me opening the front door at night,  This accomplishes two things; it lets the cooler air in through the process of convection and also distracts my peripherals with moving shadows, flickering lights and the random person walking by. When I am enjoying horror movies on my television, I wonder what my neighbors think I am watching.  Usually the loudest parts they get to hear are women screaming and making gagging sounds (as they die).  Anyway, tonight I decided to take a shot of Halloween spirit and watched Tales of Halloween.

There's not a lot of horror movies that take place during Halloween so I was excited to watch this.  It keeps being compared to Trick 'r Treat because both pf these films involve forest orgies. No wait, both films share the anthology structure but Tales of  Halloween incorporates ten different segments where Trick 'r Treat has about five.  Not only do they include ten stories but most of them are actually entertaining.  The segment entitle "Ding Dong" was the weakest and the film could have done without it.  The story was just weird and the concept of a shape shifting witch and a weak man didn't make much sense. If we're being honest the"Friday the 31st" segment was not that strong either but had a cute animated alien so it gets a pass.  This story was also weird but with its Jason inspired killer and gore, was entertaining and made more sense than an Oompa Loompa looking ass witch.   

The stories that I enjoyed the most were the first five, especially the opener, "Sweet Tooth."  This could have been nothing but jump scares and gore but Dave Parker who wrote and directed it did a splendid job with it.  When I use the word "splendid" I mean it.  The tone, pacing editing and directing were all great and legitimately scared me a couple of times.  The rest of the segments have comical and thriller elements that made this an enjoyable film.  The last story "Bad Seed" very entertaining and has moments clearly inspired by John Carpenter's The Thing.  In fact, this film sprinkles in several homages and cameos of important people in the horror movie world.  Enjoy the Easter eggs nerds.

The mistake I subconsciously made going into watching this was expecting ten scary stories.  The title says they are ten tales not ten scary tales so I would advise anyone who has not seen this film to keep that in mind.  While all stories do contain horror elements, some are action filled, silly or weird which helped me appreciate this movie more.  Ten scary stories would probably be too much and you would be on edge the whole time and remove your headphones while looking away and thinking of Full House episodes in order to not get scared.