If you like such horror anthology classics as Creepshow or Tick ‘r Treat, then you’ll LOVE… to watch them again. Just never watch this movie. Please.
If you are ever interested in checking out an unfamiliar horror movie, anthology films are usually a safe bet. If one segment doesn’t do it for you, another one will come along soon enough to try and capture your attention. More importantly, the abbreviated run-time of each of the stories can help shield inexperienced filmmakers from their worst instincts. Especially if they are bad at pacing, the expectation of a short, simple story gives them an out. No time for building complex characters or tying together a thousand plot strands, they just have to set up the concept, deliver some scares, and move on to the next one. If you can package these bite-sized tales with a creative wrapper, all the better. Movies like Tales from the Darkside or Twilight Zone: The Movie all have some parts that work better than others, but they breeze by in a fun and satisfying manner.
Now that I’ve established why anthology horror movies are practically fool-proof, let’s throw all of that out the window and explore the calamitous slog that is Halloween Tales. Before I dig in, I want to acknowledge that this is a micro-budget indie movie, and it wouldn’t be fair to have unrealistic expectations regarding special effects or production value, or even overall acting level. As Scott has pointed out in this blog series before, it is an accomplishment to make a movie, any movie, and I appreciate that this was the result of a lot of people’s hard work. That being said, I’m here to give my honest opinion about the films I watch, and I’m about to say some very unkind things about this one.
We start out in a train station where a recent accident on the tracks has caused a delay for our four main characters: Lonely school teacher, Janice; young panhandler, Lacy; failed writer, Mike; and unemployed asshole, Douglas. It becomes immediately clear that the whole movie is going to be over-dubbed, even though the actors are already speaking English. This can happen at times if film equipment isn’t good enough to capture the dialogue cleanly at whatever location is being used. Again, I don’t want to beat these folks up for a limited budget, but it really hurts the movie, particularly when non-dialogue sound is either handled with terrible Foley work or just left out all together. There are some early red flags about the script, as well, but I’ll hit on that shortly. Eventually, we get to the framing device for our “spooky” tales. These four strangers, stranded with nothing better to do, decide to each share a creepy nightmare that they had the prior night. I guess none of them have cell phones? At this point my expectations were waning, but a small part of me held out hope that I would find at least some fleeting enjoyment from one or more of the titular Halloween tales. Before long, the film managed to snuff out even that modest dream.
Janice’s story revolves around a blind date with a guy she met on the internet, and within ten minutes my worst fears were confirmed. The script was clearly written by someone who takes their craft very seriously. 90% of the segment consisted of these two people talking over glasses of wine. The dialogue was written badly, delivered badly, and the type of thing that is self-consciously writerly. Even worse, it echoed many of the same exact things that Janice had said in the train station in the interminable setup for her story. I’m half convinced that the writer (Geno McGahee, who also directed) has no interest in horror at all, but chose it as a vehicle to get across his “big ideas”. He just figured out that idiots like me would be far more likely to click on a genre film than some indie drama. When the horror elements are finally introduced at the end of the story, it comes across like McGahee realized that he hadn’t done anything to make his little playlet a “Halloween tale” yet while he was on the cab-ride to deliver the final script, and just scribbled down ninety seconds of jumbled up crap he vaguely remembered from Psycho and Friday the 13th.
Back at the train station, we get a lot more back-and-forth between the characters before the second nightmare is revealed. McGahee is clearly interested in saying something about the divide between Millennials and the previous generations, as well as the lousy job market that Gen Y has been burdened with and the different ways they have coped with that. Unfortunately, what he has to say is not cogent or insightful enough to warrant much consideration, and it is muddied by a weird molestation/rape theme as well. As with Janice’s story, each of the proceeding tales spend ample time re-iterating the same points that have just been made in the interstitial train station scenes. Sure, we get a death cult led by Satan, and a sasquatch, and some stabby masked goons, but they all play second fiddle to the unintelligible concepts being bandied about ad nausea. None of the limited violence is interesting or convincing or even stupidly gory in a low budget kind of way. The whole thing wraps up in the most predictable fashion possible (half of you got the gist of it just reading my synopsis), and the mere 82 minutes left me drained like it was twice as long.
By the way, it just occurred to me that not a single element of Halloween Tales has a fucking thing to do with Halloween. Would it have been too much to throw up a few dollar store decorations to establish that some of the stories were in the October timeframe? Maybe some trick-or-treaters at the train station? No, don’t give a shit? Ok, good to know. This movie sucks.
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