Seasonal scares: Trick r' Treat and The Children

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): Trick R' Treat ***
The Children ***½

Halloween is just around the corner so queue up now for a couple of U.S.-debut creep-fests, both of which, provide enough shivers to have deserved a better fate than to have gone straight-to-DVD. Their styles could not be more different, however: The Children adheres to a strict British mode of seemingly realistic, near-documentary verité that’s long on suspense-filled tracking shots (and, yes, they’re quite suspenseful), while Trick r' Treat goes the comic book route, complete with animated credits, primary color palette and terrific, juicy cinematography (by Glen MacPherson) – with performances to match.

You may remember, more than a year ago, theatrical previews for Trick ‘r Treat appearing on various DVDs and, I believe, in theatres, too. Yet the film was never released. Rather than being the bomb some might have expected from that, the movie is quite entertaining, as it links separate stories of townspeople in a small hamlet that, yearly, celebrates Halloween in a big way. These tales deal with both the supernatural and the natural (but very evil).

One story links a child to nasty deeds in a manner than might have made the distributor decide to avoid theaters (and the possible ensuing outrage from riled parents and/or religious groups). Otherwise, the movie offers not much we haven’t seen before in the blood, guts and violence departments – but serves it up in a very stylish and enjoyably creepy, often funny, manner. The cast includes Brian Cox, Dylan Baker, Anna Paquin and Leslie Bibb, among others, and the writing and direction comes from Michael Dougherty, (screenwriter of Superman Returns) who we should be hearing from again soon. Perhaps the main reason for the unceremonious dumping of Trick ‘r Treat is that the film comes from Warner Bros – the studio that has had -- historically through our current times -- the least notion of (or interest in) what to do with any movie that’s even a little out-of-the-mainstream. (How long did Warner Independent Pictures last, I ask you?)

The Children is the work of adapter (from a story by Paul Andrew Williams, of the great London to Brighton) and director Tom Shankland, who manages to take a very slight story – a family gathering for the Christmas holiday during which something horrible happens – and stretch it out to 80 minutes via many suspenseful scenes in which characters walk toward things: the woods, a yellow tent, the bedroom upstairs, etc., which we've seen a thousand times before, but Shankland, using a tight, often handheld camera and bright colors scattered amongst the drab, makes it seem spooky and awful anew.

Part of the reason for this is that the villains here are, no surprise, the children of the title. We’ve seen this before, too – in the interesting Spanish film from the 1970s, Who Can Kill a Child?, in The Omen series, more recently in Orphan, and elsewhere. But Shankland takes things farther into no-no territory than anything I’ve yet viewed, and the result is singularly disturbing.

The director gets fine performances all around, from the adults -- including Eva Birthistle, Stephen Campbell Moore, Rachel Shelley and Jeremy Sheffield – and especially from the children, who go from ordinary (sweet and sour) to appalling killers who use their own vulnerability to ensnare the adults, whose normal reaction, of course, is to protect them.

Perhaps the most interesting character is the teenage daughter (played very well by Hannah Tointon) stranded somewhere between child and adult, whose reactions and actions change in the course of the film, just as do those of the viewer toward this girl. No substantial reason is ever given for the children’s behavior, though clues are certainly dropped. Lack of explanation only adds to the creepiness.