It may be because I'm not as well versed in horror film history as many people seem to be, but I just don't get all the hype that this film received. Rotten Tomatoes averages out its critics' review at 85% (a really good score) and horror speciality websites across the internet gave it 5s and 10s. Often hailed as a tribute to classic horror films, it just comes across as cliched to me.
Like I said, it might be because I haven't invested myself in horror classics of the late 70s to the early 90s, but this feels less like a tribute and more just a succession of cliches, complete with predictable "twists", if they can even be called that at this stage.
Something that's less traditional about TrT is the way it's presented. It's not exactly one film, but an anthology of sorts. It's Halloween in Ohio and one town that really gets into the spirit of the holiday seems to attract spirits all its own in the holiday. The four interwoven stories that fill the hour and a half of TrT have some promising moments. If you can take anything from some of my previous reviews, especially the horror ones, it's that the way female characters are treated and written is something that interests me. Frankly, the only really interesting story in TrT is the one that deals with a group of young women all on the hunt for a date for a party they're headed to. The way this story plays with expectations was the only time that the film presented something actually original, and even this is something that's been done very similarly many times before.
If you're into classic horror films (say Nightmare on Elm Street, the original Friday the 13th, that sort of stuff) then you might enjoy Trick 'R Treat, but chances are if you've enjoyed anything that's been brought to the genre in the last ten years or so (V/H/S, Cabin in the Woods, Scream, Saw, American Psycho) you might just find Trick 'R Treat a little bit archaic.
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