Trick 'r Treat

• The doorbell rings, the cry goes out: Trick R Treat! But, wait. What s actually going on during this ghostly All Hallows Eve? Something eerie and unexpected. Something splattered and spooky. Something that brings ghouls, vampires and werewolves into the night. Answer the door a shocking surprise awaits. Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: HORROR Rating: R Age: 085391176190 UPC: 

Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) is on her way to having it all: a devoted boyfriend (Justin Long), a hard-earned job promotion, and a bright future. But when she’s forced to make a tough decision that evicts an elderly woman from her house, Christine becomes the victim of an evil curse. Now she has only three days to dissuade a dark spirit from stealing her soul before she is dragged to hell for an eternity of unthinkable torment. Director Sam Raimi (Spider-Man and The Evil Dead Trilogy) returns to the horror genre with a ! vengeance in the film that critics rave is “the most crazy, fun and terrifying horror movie in years!” (Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly)Touted as a return to Sam Raimi's horror-movie roots, Drag Me to Hell is indeed closer in spirit to the director's Evil Dead pictures than to his Spider-Man films. You got your gypsy gargoyles with rotted dentures, your upchucking corpses, your flexible two-way orifices--yes, Raimi's definitely back in the saddle. There's even a story: a sad loan officer (Alison Lohman) turns down the aforementioned denture-wearing gypsy for a loan extension, which leads to an evil curse and a date in hell in three days' time. A séance, an animal sacrifice, and a session in a storm-tossed graveyard will make the 72 hours pass very nervously, thank you, along with assorted scares. Justin Long plays Lohman's upper-class boyfriend, and Raimi fills the rest of the cast with some unusual and unfamiliar types. Along with the ! giddy horror-comedy that bursts out of the movie every 10 minu! tes or s o, there's also an underlying mood of pity: Lohman's character is something of a hard-luck sad sack, who does enough wrong things to make her seem like a truly abject individual, well outside the heroic model of most multiplex offerings. (Lohman's own little-girl-lost quality adds to this feeling.) But don't let that get in the way of the fun-ride aspects of this goofy enterprise: Drag Me to Hell is a bunch of Z-movie gags wrapped in top-drawer production values. --Robert Horton


Stills from Drag Me to Hell (Click for larger image) Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) is on her way to having it all: a devoted boyfriend (Justin Long), a hard-earned job promotion, and a bright future. But when she’s forced to make a tough decision that evicts an elderly woman from her house, Christine becomes the victim of an evil curse. Now she has only three days to dissuade a dark spirit from stealing her soul before she is dragged to hell for an eternity of unthinkable torment. Director Sam Raimi (Spider-Man and The Evil Dead Trilogy) returns to the horror genre with a vengeance in the film that critics rave is “the most crazy, fun and terrifying horror movie in years!” (Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly)Touted as a return to Sam Raimi's horror-movie roots, Drag Me to Hell is indeed closer in spirit to the director's Evil Dead pictures than to his Spider-Man films. You got your gypsy gargoyles with r! otted dentures, your upchucking corpses, your flexible two-way! orifice s--yes, Raimi's definitely back in the saddle. There's even a story: a sad loan officer (Alison Lohman) turns down the aforementioned denture-wearing gypsy for a loan extension, which leads to an evil curse and a date in hell in three days' time. A séance, an animal sacrifice, and a session in a storm-tossed graveyard will make the 72 hours pass very nervously, thank you, along with assorted scares. Justin Long plays Lohman's upper-class boyfriend, and Raimi fills the rest of the cast with some unusual and unfamiliar types. Along with the giddy horror-comedy that bursts out of the movie every 10 minutes or so, there's also an underlying mood of pity: Lohman's character is something of a hard-luck sad sack, who does enough wrong things to make her seem like a truly abject individual, well outside the heroic model of most multiplex offerings. (Lohman's own little-girl-lost quality adds to this feeling.) But don't let that get in the way of the fun-ride aspects of this goofy e! nterprise: Drag Me to Hell is a bunch of Z-movie gags wrapped in top-drawer production values. --Robert Horton

Stills from Drag Me to Hell (Click for larger image) The doorbell rings, the cry goes out: Trick 'R Treat! But, wait. What's actually going on during this ghostly All Hallows Eve? Something eerie and unexpected. Something splattered and spooky. Something that brings ghouls, vampires and werewolves into the night. Answer the door â€" a shocking! surprise awaits. From producer Bryan Singer (director of X-Me! n and Su perman Returns) and writer-director Michael Dougherty (co-scripter of X2 and Superman Returns) comes a multitale bag of wicked yarns, four cleverly interlocked stories built on Shocktober admonitions like always check the candy and don’t extinguish the jack-o-lantern before midnight. So answer the door now: Experience horror made for today's fright fan.Trick 'r Treat, directed by Michael Dougherty of Superman Returns fame, has a comic book feel but does a nice job of conveying the real things that can spook kids, making for a good Halloween thriller. Composed of four intertwined stories that unfold simultaneously, starting on the same block in Ohio, Trick 'r Treat initially bears some resemblance to John Carpenter's Halloween, in that it focuses on terrors experienced by teens and young, costumed children. As the short tales become increasingly violent and complex, one begins to see that many culprits are responsible, and that a general haunting! of all neighborhood jack-o'-lanterns is the root cause of some gory crimes. For example, in one segment, Emma (Leslie Bibb), against the wishes of her husband, Henry (Tahmoh Penikett), blows out a candle in her jack-o'-lantern and pays dearly as her night unfolds. Meanwhile, Laurie (Anna Paquin of True Blood), a young woman dressed as Little Red Riding Hood, goes to the woods to party with her sister and two girlfriends, attracting a stalker whose smile alone is creepy enough to startle a slumber party crowd. The two stories starring younger kids carry the film, however. In one, elementary-schooler Charlie (Brett Kelly) meets with the demented school principal, Steven (Dylan Baker), who assesses Charlie's love of stealing candy and thrashing pumpkins. At the same time, a witchy nerd named Rhonda (Samm Todd) is invited to join a young gang at an abandoned rock quarry and faces the mean gang leader, Macy (Britt McKillip), after a prank goes awry. "Earlier" or "Later" ! periodically flash onscreen in comic-book typeface, successful! ly direc ting the viewer through time and also relieving some tension that would've built through a single sustained story. In this, light comedy and some downright silliness shine through. All the kids are in great costumes, and the film, overall, has a festive goth look. By the end, one trusts that Trick 'r Treat is really targeting the younger age group that it highlights, yet it contains enough spook to make adults jumpy as well. --Trinie Dalton