Tales of Halloween

Anthology movies face a challenge like no other. With no singular through line, and an abbreviated time for each story, how does a filmmaker craft their short story so people will care about it? Tales Of Halloween says “why bother?”, and crams in 10 woefully undercooked stories into less than 90 minutes (a full 10 of the 95 minute runtime is credits and the opening sequence). At least than 10 minutes a story, you’re literally given the set-up, climax, and finale in less time than it takes to take a shower. Every story is rushed and disappears in the blink of an eye. You won’t come to care about the characters because you CAN’T. This movie doesn’t let you. What’s worse is that almost all the stories revolve around one premise: bullies get some form of comeuppance. Only two out of ten don’t have someone being victimized or bullied, and it kills the momentum of the movie. And even in some of those, there’s an innocent victim at the end, so the story’s own premise falls apart. And most of the stories are so poorly constructed anyway. “Grim Grinning Ghost” doesn’t even bother trying to explain itself and just ends before a climax even happens, and another “This Means War” is just two neighbors fighting over Halloween decorations with a dull thud of an ending. And don’t get me started on the monumentally stupid “Friday The 31st”, with the obvious Jason Voorhees analog that mugs and makes Bill Cosby noises. “Ding Dong” is literally a waste of time. “Bad Seed”, the last story the movie, attempts to at least reference the other stories to give this anthology a sense of cohesion, but then ends the movie on a cliffhanger, which is the biggest middle finger. This movie has aspirations of being a gory, rapid-fire Twilight Zone kind of movie, where the heroes don’t always win, and there’s spooky, unexplained happenings. But The Twilight Zone has heart and a soul and a brain. It let you get invested in the characters, and when it delivered a cruel twist of fate, there was a reason for it. The stories in Tales Of Halloween are the kind that babysitters tell to their young charges to scare the shit out of them (which is appropriate, since that’s the set-up for the first movie). But those stories are flimsy and meant to scare small children. Tales Of Halloween is what happens when you film those stories, and as it turns out, those stories suck.