When I started Octoberfest, I had one main goal- to watch as many horror films set on or around Halloween as I could that I had never seen, or, in the case of a couple of films (Transylvania 6-5000 & American Nightmare), ones I hadn't seen in many a blood moon. The idea was to find some additional go-to horror films for the season besides the old familiar favorites, a la the Halloween series or the Night of the Demons series, among others.
Alas, I've come up short for the most part, only reconfirming that I basically still enjoyed the films I'd already seen, but not finding any new ones that seemed likely to make the grade for future re-watchings. Until now, that is. It may have taken the bulk of the month, but I finally found not one, but two films I legitimately enjoyed and can absolutely see myself watching around Halloween time moving forward, if not annually (Carpenter's Halloween may be the only one that truly makes that grade, not counting some TV faves, like It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and The Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror), then certainly semi-annually.
As time is of the essence, what with Halloween just a day away, I had to forgo doing separate reviews for the two films, in favor of going the double-feature route. Also, I wanted to do a brief look at some of the other stuff I've been watching on TV and via streaming services, and tomorrow's kind of the last day I can do that while still technically falling under the October and/or Halloween banner, so keep an eye out for that tomorrow.
That said, I'm mulling over doing a Halloween post-mortem, as I'll be watching the 2018 version of the film for the first time since I saw it in theatres last year, and was interested in talking about whether it still holds up or not, so we'll see. I'll also be watching the Blu-Ray bonuses for the first time, and I gather there's some deleted scenes and possibly an alternate ending that may be of interest, so I wanted to talk about that stuff as well. I also kind of like the idea of bringing my Octoberfest series to a close on the number 13, which seems about right.
We begin with, appropriately enough, Mischief Night, which, in reality is, of course, the night before Halloween, known for being the night that kids go out and prank people by throwing eggs at them or their houses, or smashing their jack-o-lanterns, or spray-painting their garages or what have you, or just generally committing mayhem wherever they go. (I should also mention that this film is the one from 2014, being as how there are multiple films with that same title.)
This serves as the backdrop to this film, in which a literal babysitter- as in she's looking after an actual infant- runs afoul of both pranksters and a potential serial killer, and has to sort out which is which and react accordingly. The less you know about this one going in, the better, so I'll just say this: while it's standard operating procedure for a killer in a slasher film to eventually come up against a formidable opponent in the form of the so-called "Final Girl," this may be the first such film in which the girl in question might be as troubled as the killer himself!
The excellent Brooke Anne Smith (TV's Too Close to Home, Awkward.) plays said girl, Kaylie, a social outcast-type that is subbing as a babysitter for her more popular friend Daphne (Nikki Limo, Smiley), who is claiming to be sick, but really just wants to go out and party- and maybe play a few pranks of her own.
Kaylie has an unrequited crush on Graham (Matt Angel, the My Super Psycho Sweet 16 series and another Halloween-themed slasher, The Funhouse Massacre), who Daphne encourages to go after- but might there already be something going on between Daphne and Graham? As it turns out, yes and no- but not in the way you might think.
Meanwhile, Kaylie is doing her best to hold down the fort, in spite of the best efforts of some local teen hooligans, as well as worrying about a creeper Neighborhood Watch guy, Mr. Smiles (a game Malcolm McDowell, who ad-libbed most of his lines, as seen in the outtakes shown in the credits). As if that weren't bad enough, there's also a masked man skulking around the property, who may have something more legitimately scary in mind for the evening's festivities. But, like I said, he might just be in for the shock of his life when he gets a hold of something he can't handle as well as he might have thought.
Mischief Night tonally reminds me a bit of another recent holiday slasher, You Better Watch Out (the one from 2016, with The Visit star Olivia DeJonge), in that it starts out as one thing before turning into something else you weren't at all suspecting. How you feel about the movie may hinge dramatically on the big twist that occurs about mid-way through the film, in which things take a decided turn which may turn off some viewers. However, those who stick with it will be rewarded with another twist later on in the film that puts the film firmly back in slasher movie territory.
That said, the movie does drag a bit in places, and at one point, even inches into more of a character study than a proper horror film. But, like I said, it works its way back to horror if you just hang in there. The end result is quite unlike any horror film I've seen, which is saying something, though I'll allow that the radical tonal shifts can be a bit hard to swallow at times. Still, points for at least trying to do something different with the slasher subgenre, which isn't the easiest thing to do, given how set in stone most of the formats of those films are under normal circumstances.
I, for one, really appreciated the attempt to do something different with the slasher film, and if the results are occasionally haphazard, at least it's going for something truly original, which is more than I can say for most such films. It certainly helps that Kaylie is not your typical slasher heroine- to say the absolute very least- and that the killer, known only as "The Man" (Marc Valera, Shooting LA), is not your typical bad guy. I can definitely see myself watching this one again, especially knowing what I now know about what ends up happening. Rewatchability is always a good thing in my book, and Mischief Night definitely has that in spades.
Kudos to first-time director Travis Baker, of the internet movie review series Cinema Cool semi-fame, who also wrote the film. Baker also worked on Hostel as a "research assistant" (that must have been fun!) and as a production assistant on Oliver Stone's underrated Savages. Baker is an acclaimed film historian in his spare time, who wrote critical essays for Warner Brothers and Fox for many of their classic DVD re-releases, so it's always nice to see a fellow critic make something worthwhile himself. By all means, check this one out, especially if you're looking for something different.
If Mischief Night is hard to describe without giving anything away, then Hellions is just plain hard to describe, period. A summary of the plot isn't going to do it justice, but here goes: a teen girl, Dora Vogel (Chloe Rose, Degrassi: The Next Generation), discovers on Halloween that she's pregnant. Because she's underaged, her doctor (Rossif Sutherland, son of Donald, of TV's ER and Reign) informs her that he's going to have to tell her mother (Rachel Wilson, Saw: The Final Chapter, In the Tall Grass), but gives her a little time to do it herself out of kindness.
After mulling over staying home and brooding, with her mother's encouragement, she finally decides to go out with her boyfriend, Jace (Luke Bilyk, also of Degrassi, where he and Rose played a couple as well), and postpone the inevitable, giving herself one last night out of fun before she has to face the music. Unfortunately, Jace never shows up and Dora begins to get worried. Not helping matters are the efforts of local kids to terrorize her by creeping around her house and throwing things at the windows and the like.
After a certain point, things escalate dramatically, and Dora calls the cops, who send along Officer Corman (Robert Patrick, Terminator 2, The Faculty), who seems to know more than he lets on about what these wily hellions are really up to- and it involves Dora's unborn child. Things go from there, and only get stranger and stranger, to say the absolute least. Let's just say you may never look at trick or treaters in quite the same way again after watching this one.
The end results aren't quite Lynchian, but they're definitely in the same neighborhood. Hellions is kind of like what might happen if Books of Blood-era Clive Barker ate a bunch of bad clams and binge-watched David Cronenberg's The Brood for ten hours straight and decided to write his own version while still under the throes of food poisoning. It's sort of like a weird mix of The Strangers, Trick 'R Treat and Eraserhead.
After a certain point, things become downright hallucinatory, to the point where a lot of viewers won't have a clue what is going on, but if you stick with it, things eventually make a sort of sense. Kind of. Like I said, it's hard to explain. It's definitely the sort of film where you'll wonder if what you're seeing is real or imagined, or if the heroine has completely gone off the deep end, possibly the result of (literally) eating some bad pickles covered in honey and salt, which is just gross, so it probably serves her right, lol.
The way the film is shot doesn't exactly help, as things are often covered in a pinkish, lavender hue that makes it seem like Dora stepped off the planet and entered Hell's version of Oz- as in the Wizard of Oz, not Australia. At times, it sort of reminded me of Inside, the 2007 French New Wave horror flick, at least plot-wise, with a little High Tension (or maybe even Repulsion) thrown in for good measure, but it's way weirder than any of those films. It's more like those films on LSD or some particularly strong mushrooms.
By the end of it, you may wonder what actually happened and what was just imagined by Dora, but I think that's sort of the point. It's the sort of film that keeps you guessing and absolutely welcomes various theories as to what went on and offers up little in the way of confirmation one way or another. So, in that sense, it really is like a David Lynch film, in that he prefers to let viewers make up their own minds about what really happened.
As such, some may not care for this approach, especially if you like your movies wrapped up in a neat little box at the end. This is definitely not that kind of film. It's more the type of film that inspires a billion wild theories on Reddit or YouTube. I love that sort of thing- you may not. I would say that, if this all sounds intriguing to you, it probably will be, but if you like to be fed your horror with a spoonful of sugar (or honey, as it were), this is not the film for you.
As with Mischief Night, Hellions is gifted with a particularly talented leading lady in Chloe Rose, who is sympathetic, likable and seems like one of those girls in high school that could just as easily be a social outcast as the most popular girl in school. It's fitting that she wears an angel costume for most of the film, especially since that outfit ends up bloody, battered and torn- not unlike Dora herself.
Just as Dora straddles the line between popularity and being scorned by her social circle when word gets out about her situation, so, too, does her outfit symbolize how precarious that line is between the two. All angels are this close to being devils, in other words- just ask Lucifer. (Or better yet, maybe don't.) This is a film rife with symbolism and hidden meaning, much of it firmly on the dark side of life, particularly as it relates to impending motherhood and fear of pregnancy itself. Not everyone is cut out to be a mother.
This is material inherently ripe for horror, and was used as precisely that in most of the films I mentioned, as well as many others where that came from, from Village of the Damned to The Omen to The Children. Let's face it: kids can be scary, and so can pregnancy on the whole. Obviously, those fears are taken to the extreme in horror films, but even without the actual horror element present, such things can still be pretty damn scary, especially if you're little more than a kid yourself, as is the case in this film.
The kids here certainly make a solid case for the value of abortion in society, that's for sure. More than living up to their name as little hellions, it's as if Sam, from the underrated Halloween anthology Trick 'R Treat, brought a bunch of his friends along to freak out and terrorize ya'lls' neighborhood. These little buggers are freaky personified and excellent advertisements as to why kids may not be for everyone. Yep, them kids is scary. 👦👧😈😨
As you might have guessed, this is not your average horror flick, and, as such, may not be everyone's cup of tea. It had its premiere at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, and also screened at the 2015 Toronto Film Festival, it being a Canadian flick, just like back in the good old days of early Cronenberg and wonderfully twisted Canadian slasher flicks like Black Christmas, Happy Birthday to Me and My Bloody Valentine. (Note also that all of those also have holiday themes.)
I was somewhat surprised to see that the film was met by mixed reviews- not so much by mainstream critics, which is to be expected, but also from the horror press, though Bloody Disgusting and Shock Till You Drop both had positive things to say about it, as did, astonishingly enough, RobertEbert.com. Normally, I wouldn't read anyone else's reviews before writing my own, but was curious to see what other people thought about this one, especially in terms of their interpretation of it. It seems like people are really divided by it- they either love it or absolutely hate it. I suppose that seems about right.
The film was written by Pascal Trottier, best-known for The Colony and for writing one of the A Christmas Horror Story segments, and directed by Bruce McDonald, of Hard Core Logo and Pontypool fame. He also directs a lot of TV, including the horror anthology series Creeped Out, Dark Matter and the TV-movie My Babysitter's a Vampire, which spawned a series, which he also directed episodes of as well. He's also directed several episodes of Degrassi, which explains the casting of Rose and Bilyk.
I just loved it, and I can absolutely see it becoming a go-to Halloween favorite in the years to come. Hell, I'm tempted to see it again right away, now that I've read/watched some of the online theories about it, but that will likely have to wait, as I have more traditional Halloween watching to do and little time to do it.
Still, the fact that I want to rewatch it at all is a good sign, not the least given all the crap I had to wade through to get to a bona fide modern Halloween classic-in-the-making, IMHO. Ditto Mischief Night. It may have taken most of the month, but I finally came up a winner- and twice at that. By all means, check both of these films out, which are readily available on DVD and Blu-Ray. Maybe they will become part of your annual Halloween viewing, too. 🎃
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