Tales of Halloween

Dir: Neil Marshall, Darren Lynn Bousman, Axelle Carolyn, Lucky McKee, Andrew Kasch, Paul Solet, John Skipp, Adam Gierasch, Jace Anderson, Mike Mendez, Ryan Schifrin, Dave Parker

2015

**

Tales of Halloween is an anthology of ten interlocking short stories that revolve around the night of Halloween. The directors range from well known to inexperienced and the cast are a mix of horror icons (all directors) and some of the worst actors working today. I expected fun, no masterpieces, just short, sharp and scary shorts that offered something new and punchy. Sadly, this wasn’t the case. Some of the films are good but most of them are poor copies of well established classic horror films – this is the Halloween equivalent of the dreadful Christmas films Hallmark churn out every year. I’m actually starting to prefer Christmas nuts over Halloween enthusiasts. The horror greats that are involved should hand their heads in shame. The ten stories take place in the same unnamed suburban American town and is pointlessly narrated by a radio DJ (Adrienne Barbeau) – an idea borrowed from A Christmas Horror Story but obviously a tribute to John Carpenter’s The Fog. The first film, Sweet Tooth, is Written and directed by Dave Parker. Mikey (Daniel DiMaggio) has just finished trick-or-treating around his neighborhood and come home with a bag full of candy. His parents (Greg Grunberg and Clare Kramer – the same characters both played in 2013’s Big Ass Spider) have left him in the care of his babysitter Lizzy (Madison Iseman), who has invited her boyfriend Kyle over to watch the film Night of the Living Dead. As Mikey begins to enjoy the candy he's collected, Lizzy and Kyle share the urban legend of "Sweet Tooth"; long ago, a boy of Mikey's age named Timothy was denied his trick-or-treat candy by his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Blake, but a curious Timothy discovered that the parents kept and ate all his candy themselves. Enraged, Timothy killed both of his parents and ate all the candy, including the ones already in their stomach, and thus became Sweet Tooth, a demon who appears each Halloween looking everywhere for candy. Mikey is rattled by this story and decides to go to sleep early, much to Lizzy and Kyle's amusement. They decide to make out and eat the candy, before being attacked by Sweet Tooth himself, which Mikey overhears. The ghostly being heads toward Mikey's bedroom but Mikey has left a bar of chocolate for Sweet Tooth on the floor to take. That, combined with the fact that Mikey hasn't eaten any candy, spares him from death. Later, Mikey's parents come home to find Lizzy and Kyle's grotesque corpses, with Mikey standing nearby exclaiming that they ate all his Halloween candy. It is part Candyman and part Halloween, it’s one of the better shorts but it will probably be best remembered for featuring fan favourites Madison Iseman and Greg Grunberg. The Night Billy Raised Hell was written by Clint Sears and directed by Darren Lynn Bousman (Saw II, III & IV). Billy Thompson (Marcus Eckert) absurdly tries to start trick-or-treating really early in the afternoon, prompting his big sister Britney (Natalis Castillo) and her boyfriend Todd (Ben Stillwell) to trick him into playing a prank, that, according to both teenagers, had been going on for years. They prepared an egg for Billy to throw at Mr. Abbadon's (Barry Bostwick) house, who's notoriously stingy and never gives out candy for the children across the years, but Billy was caught red-handed by the man of the hour, while his sister and her boyfriend fled. Billy was ushered into Mr. Abbadon's house, where he says he's going to teach Billy a lesson, and takes Mordecai, a little boy of Billy's age who has the same Halloween costume (red devil) as him. Mr. Abbadon then lets Mordecai, in a costume and mask similar to Billy, to wreck around the neighborhood, from doing harmless pranks like spray-painting the walls into the more bloody terrors, like stabbing a rude neighbor who gave him toothbrush instead of candy, and then later on tricking the same neighbor into stepping to a bear trap, severing his foot. The duo even hijacked Adrianne Curry's car along the way. After all the ruckus, Mr. Abbadon returns to his house to a tied Billy and releases him, and reveals that he is the Devil himself and under the mask Mordecai is also the Little Devil. He lets Billy go, only for Billy to be arrested outside by a swarm of waiting police from the previous terror caused by Mordecai in his Halloween costume. It’s a neat idea but is poorly executed. I was excited to see Barry Bostwick and expected an over the top performance from him but it just didn’t work for me. It was daft, just not quite daft enough and I expected a lot more from Bousman. The third film, Trick, has a lot more going for it. Written by Greg Commons and directed by Adam Gierasch, the story starts on a seemingly peaceful Halloween night, with friends Nelson (Trent Haaga), Maria (Tiffany Shepis), James (John F. Beach) and Caitlyn (Casey Ruggieri) who are lounging around Nelson's house, smoking pot. As Nelson goes to greet a girl trick-or-treating, the group is alarmed when the girl stabs Nelson multiple times in the abdomen, gravely injuring him. Panicked, Maria goes to her car to drive Nelson to the hospital, only to be attacked by four kids in costumes. Maria flees, but the injury causes her to drop dead on the house's pool. By this time, Nelson has succumbed to his injury and dies as well. James tries to find help, only to have his face burned by yet another trick-or-treater, and she completes her attack by stuffing his mouth with rat poison, killing him. Caitlyn, the only adult left, flees to the backyard, where she hides in a shack. It is then revealed that Caitlyn, Nelson, Maria and James are all psychopaths and have been kidnapping kids and gouging their eyes out for their amusement. The group of kids finds the shack, which turns out to be the place they tortured the previous kids, and cornered Caitlyn. A girl, whose one eye has been gouged by the adults, executes Caitlyn with an axe on her head. It’s a great twist ending and the initial attack comes from nowhere. It’s a great idea, but it is totally wasted by the fact that none of the actors can actually act. It is rushed and cheap when it could have been something pretty unique – dare I say it, it could have led to its own feature length film but as it is here its such a wasted opportunity. The middle stories are all a little odd. The Weak and the Wicked doesn’t fit with any of the other films at all. Written by Molly Millions and directed by Paul Solet, it sees three bullies, Alice (Grace Phipps), Isaac (Booboo Stewart) and Bart (Noah Segan) as they proceed to torture a kid after trick-or-treating (Jack Dylan Grazer), but are interrupted by a teenager of their age in a devil costume (Keir Gilchrist). The teenager hands Alice a drawing of the Devil and utters that the Devil will come to aid the weak if they're wearing his costume. Alice dismisses the picture and begins to chase the teenager away with the other bullies to the other side of the city, where the teenager stops by a burnt-down caravan. In a flashback when Alice, Bart and Isaac were kids, they had set the caravan on fire, which belonged to the teenager, with his parents inside it at the time. As the bullies beat the teenager up and prepares to light him on fire, Bart and Isaac are attacked by an unseen force. When Alice turns around, the devil himself has showed up, looking exactly like the teenager’s costume. As Alice is killed by the devil, blood violently splashes to the teenager's face, who smiles in satisfaction. The blood hits the young actor hard, it must have really hurt. It’s a little too serious and doesn’t quite fit with the other stories. The caravan looks dirty in the present scene, even though it is shown burning up in the flash-back scene. It tries and fails at being clever and the devil looks rubbish. Axelle Carolyn’s Gim Grinning Ghost is about as amateur as it gets. As Lynn (Alex Essoe) prepares to leave her mother's (Lin Shaye) Halloween party after hearing her mother recount a ghost story, she encounters strange occurrences on her way home. First her car uncharacteristically breaks down in the middle of the road, forcing her to finish her trip by foot. While walking, she senses that a shadowy figure, the one from her mother's story, is following her. Terrified, she runs into the safety of her house, and believes the figure has not followed her to her house. As Lynn settles to a couch to watch a film, her dog suddenly gets nervous and leaves the room. Lynn smiles and leans back to the couch, only to find out that the ghost is sitting beside her. It is boring, predictable and the opposite of scary. The fact that it features a cameo from Stuart Gordon – one of my all time favourite horror directors - is heartbreaking. Lucky McKee’s Ding Dong confused me. Rewinding to the previous year, we see Jack (Marc Senter) and his wife Bobbie (Pollyanna McIntosh) watch as children trick or treat on Halloween night. Bobbie is distraught by the fact she has no children of her own, to which Jack tries to cheer her up by dressing their dog as Gretel. This leads things to get heated and ends up with Bobbie suddenly turning into a red demon and clawing Jack's face with her long, devilish nails. In the present time, Jack and Bobbie have prepared to greet trick-or-treaters, dressed as Hansel and a witch respectively, to Jack’s worry. Even though everything goes normally, with Bobbie excitedly performing a skit to the delight of the children, something feels uneasy between the couple every time there's children on their front porch. Finally, when a boy also dressed as Hansel is visiting the couple's house alone, Bobbie prepares to lead him inside, but Jack, aware of his wife's intent, alert the boy's mother, who's looking for him. A disheartened Bobbie goes back inside, and Jack persuades her to stop what they're doing, telling her that it wouldn’t be right to have children of their own with the abusive way she treats him. It is then revealed that Bobbie is a witch and enjoys eating children, and when Jack reveals he's secretly had a vasectomy to prevent a pregnancy, she becomes distraught and furious. She drags Jack into the house's oven, which resembles hell, and ends up melting herself. It’s badly written and badly performed, although I do quite like Pollyanna McIntosh. Andrew Kasch and John Skipp’s This Means War is basically a Halloween version of Deck the Halls. Boris (Dana Gould) has proudly finished his Halloween-decorated house. But when children are about to greet his house, they are lured away because of his neighbor, Dante (James Duval) has set-up a rock and gore-oriented Halloween decorations on his house, complete with loud rock music blasting from the speakers. Boris walks up to Dante's yard to ask him to turn the volume lower, but Dante and his colleagues just laugh at him and mock his decorations. Enraged, Boris wrecks the sound system and halts the music, but Dante exacts revenge by planning to throw a huge bucket of blood to Boris' slick Halloween decorations. As Boris runs up to stop Dante, the latter splashes the blood on the former instead, and declares a war. Spectators begin to crowd as the two fight, placing bets and egging them on until the police come. Boris charges Dante towards a sharp piece of standing wood, killing both of them instantly. Deck the Halls is a pretty bad film, it was copied by Hallmark a few years later who took the premise, hired cheaper actors and renamed it Battle of the Bulbs. It is an awful film, one of the worst ever made in fact. This means war is considerably worse. Friday the 31st was a bit of light relief, written by Mike Mendez and Dave Parker and directed by Mendez, the film is a return to silly – something the anthology was in dire need of at this point. A deformed serial killer (Nick Principe) who resembles Jason Voorhees hunts a girl dressed as Dorothy for Halloween (Amanda Moyer). The girl runs to a barn where she discovers several of the killer's victims, among them her friend, Casey. The killer hunts her down to the barn, and when she manages to escape and flee, he kills her by throwing a spear through her chest. As the killer celebrates the slaying, a UFO beams down a small alien that tries to trick-or-treat. The killer proceeds to stomp over the tiny alien, seemingly crushing him, but the alien instead turns into goo and possesses the victim's body, chasing the panicked killer into his barn. The possessed girl and the killer then proceed to attack each other with sharp objects, which eventually concludes with both of them decapitating each other. The alien then leaves the girl's decapitated head to teleport back to his spaceship, taking the killer's head with him. It is stupid, gory and fun and a million times better than the rest. Ryan Schifrin’s The Ransom of Rusty Rex is probably the most intelligent of the stories. When they spot millionaire Jebediah Rex (horror legend John Landis) letting his son Rusty (Ben Woolf) out for trick-or-treating, former bank robbers Hank (Sam Witwer) and Dutch (Jose Pablo Cantillo) set out their plan to kidnap the millionaire's son. After succeeding doing so, the kidnappers tie up a still-masked Rusty into a chair and call his father for a ransom. However, the father seems overjoyed that his son has been kidnapped and promptly hangs up the phone. Hank calls him one more time to discuss about ransom, but the father coldly tells them they can have his son. Exasperated, the kidnappers find out that the son is actually a deformed monster that clings to the people near him. They tried to sink him down the river, but he came back to their lair. Hank calls Jebediah once more, only to be told that Rusty has been holding Jebediah and his wife hostage for five years as he would not leave them, and thanked the kidnappers for taking him away from them. Hank and Dutch once again tied Rusty and sets him on fire, but as Hank comes back from buying food, Rusty, who has gotten hungry, has eaten Dutch up to his head. Hank screams, the film ends. It is half an idea, the first half being good and the second half poorly written. The final story, Bad Seed, is written and directed by Neil Marshall, the film’s headlining horror director. After a man has his head bitten off by a massive pumpkin he has just carved, Detective McNally (Kristina Klebe) investigates the crime scene. At first she refuses to believe the description of the victim's wife, but after the forensics team member, Bob, confirms the killer was indeed a carved pumpkin, she works to put a stop to it. The pumpkin proceeds to eat a trick-or-treating child and terrorizes the neighborhood, which has already suffered from the events portrayed earlier in the film. McNally manages to track the killer pumpkin down to a backyard, where it attacks her; though she initially runs out of bullets, Bob appears with a shotgun, and she is able to destroy it. Among the broken pieces of pumpkin, she finds a sticker from a company called Clover Corp, headed by a Professor Milo Gottleib (played by legend Joe Dante), advertising the pumpkin as a 100% organic super-pumpkin. McNally and Bob visit the Clover Corp. headquarters and discover thousands of genetically-modified pumpkins, all potentially dangerous, waiting to be sold. The initial pumpkin attack was fun but by this point the film was really starting to drag. This was no the pay-off I had been hoping for. If the pumpkins would have gone around town killing every character we’d seen throughout the movie then it would have been great but as it was it was fairly rubbish, especially from talent such as Marshall. They achieved a lot on a small budget but nothing here is of a high quality. What the film makers would describe as ‘tribute’ I would describe as theft. It is a horrible am-dram style mess of horror clichés and half ideas. It would have been far better if the stories had been linked in some way but that would have required creativity and time and it didn’t seem that the people responsible had either. Watch a real horror film this Halloween instead of this nonsense.