Good morning 🐣

Miss me!? I’m back from vacation y’all and just in time for Spooky Pumpkin-Spice Haunting Season! I’m one of those people that wishes Halloween was year-round, so bear with me as we begin this month’s journey into the darker recesses.

To set the mood, check out this funky music video for “Sick of Being Honest” by MILKBLOOD, which stars a demonic alien ghoul that has some sweet dance moves. It’s the perfect soundtrack to Cinescape in October.

Let’s get this party started!

A brief intermission 🍿

Now watch this 👀

A tired couple walks home from a party. The wife blows out a jack-o’-lantern before the night is through. “There are rules,” her husband warns. “You might upset someone.” He goes inside but she defiantly tears down the front-yard decorations anyways, pulling ghostly white sheets off of scarecrows one by one while a masked figure watches from across the street. “I hate Halloween,” she mutters to herself as fake severed limbs swing from the trees. But since she has so clearly broken those sacred rules, she swiftly meets her gruesome comeuppance. We then smash cut to the opening credits, a fun montage of comic-book panels foreshadowing the anthology of stories to come.

“Trick ’r Treat” (watch the trailer) blew up at conventions and film festivals back in 2007, when I was fortunate enough to see it, but despite featuring the likes of Anna Paquin and Brian Cox, the studio inexplicably pulled the plug just before it was set to be released in theaters. It took a couple years to see the light of day again on home video, where it’s since become a certified cult classic.

Thankfully, besides being available on demand and for free on Kanopy through your local library, Warner Bros. is finally giving it the theatrical release it’s always deserved. Starting this week you’ll be able to catch “Trick ’r Treat” in theaters on select dates nationwide.

And you’ll certainly want to check it out because this movie’s got a little bit of everything — werewolves, vampires, ghost kids, and serial killers — all set on one night in one small town: Warren Valley, Ohio. Writer and director Michael Dougherty does an exceptional job tying all the stories together with tangential interactions and an overarching feeling of Halloween nostalgia.

Our ghostly guide through the movie, always lurking in the background, is Sam (short for Samhain), the true spirit of Halloween. He’s kinda cute and kinda sinister with a burlap sack over his head. When he goes trick-or-treating, his nasty little candy bag drags behind him and you can faintly hear some poor creature screeching from within on each bump down the porch steps.

If there’s one central theme to each story, it’s respect for the holiday’s traditions. “This is the one night when the dead and all sorts of things roam free,” a school principal explains to a trick-or-treater played by Brett Kelly (the kid from “Bad Santa”). “All these traditions — jack-o’-lanterns, putting on costumes, handing out treats — they were started to protect us, but nowadays no one really cares.”

He takes another look at the kid and reminds him of one more tradition: “Always check your candy.” The kid erupts like a fountain of regurgitated chocolate. The gruesome humor in “Trick ’r Treat” only gets darker from there and it’s a fun way to kick off the Halloween movie season.

Until next time! 👻