Terror no Dia das Bruxas

Trick won't win any awards anytime soon, but it's far from the disaster many people have been making it out to be. I walked in expecting the worst, but the first 20 minutes genuinely gripped me and even made me jump once. As the film continues, it mostly becomes a Dr. Loomis vs. Michael Myers storyline with Omar Epps' frazzled detective trying to make sense of how a seemingly normal teenage male could survive a few gunshots and a fall off a hospital roof and still continue to kill people every Halloween for a number of years. Could it be a copycat killer? You'll have to stick with Trick to find out and, once you do, you'll most likely be let down.

While most of the film plays out like a supernatural-tinged slasher, the last 15 minutes of the movie, where the film finally reveals what's really been going on, is likely to inspire many groans and rolling eyes. There's a piece of an interesting idea in there, but it's not as well-executed as it could have been. There's a final twist at the end that's really a groaner and makes no sense whatsoever.

The acting is at least passable for most of the film and it's nice to see genre icon Tom Atkins getting something to do every now and then. It also might be one of the better of the recent "the corpses in this haunted house are real" movies that seem to be coming out all the time. There's some good suspense here and there, too, so Trick is far from a complete waste of time.

The first half of this movie is decently good relative to the budget. The quality in the second half of the movie drops off exponentially as it runs. The movie then commits suicide by dragging the ending out to ridiculous lengths.

Half way through the movie - 6 3/4 way through the movie - 5 Interminable ending - 3

All considered, this movie is a ~4

I had some hope for "Trick", it being a Halloween themed movie and directed by Patrick Lussier, whose "Drive Angry" is one of my guilty pleasures. Sadly, "Trick" tricked me & turned out to be a bad substandard movie, and not the so-bad-it's-good type.

It took only a few minutes to understand that it's not going to be a great ride and it took an hour for me to give up and check how much of the runtime there's left. "Trick" is an extremely flat and dull horror flick, it will very likely fail to raise any emotions in you and will maybe mildly entertain you. Then again, I can see how "Trick" qualifies for dumb fun. For me it wasn't fun, mostly just dumb. At least half of the plot details, some of the character design and their actions are unrealistic, awkward and, at the worst, irritating. The pacing is actually pretty fast, it's just that the happenings on screen are not very engaging. It doesn't help that the ending twists can be predicted easily as well. Acting's okay, but it doesn't even matter on the background of all the flaws. The killer is seriously dull. Even technically "Trick" is boring, lighting is all the same, doesn't matter if it's day or night, a lot of the camera work (during the uninspired action sequences) looks like a complete overkill & even the original score is cheap and cliche. One thing I think we all hoped for is that there's at least some awesome kills - well, that's not the case. The kills are mostly all the same, unimpressive & not very creative. You know, even Tom Atkins didn't save this movie.

If I'm grasping at straws "Trick" does have two minor qualities - near the end the already n-th unrealistic plot moves made me laugh a bit, it's kinda hilarious. And the other quality is it simply being a halloween themed movie. It offers no treats though. My rating (and it's generous): 3/10.

Ok, so the kills were done quite well and Omar Epps is always good for the money. However the camera, editing and direction are woeful, angles, interaction and the rest of the cast are terrible. It must have been on an experimental day/week etc.

Maybe one or 2 scares. A bit thrilling. A bit goofy. Not too bad. Kinda an okay slasher film. Moderate twist in here! We enjoyed it. It's fun even if it's not the greatest