Poster for Tales of Halloween. Text reads “One Night. One Town. Ten Chilling Stories.” Image of a gnarled, leafless tree in from of a giant moon; the sun is setting orange on the horizon like flames.
Let’s take a break from The Haunting for a moment for this live-blog-style recap of a horror anthology, currently available on Netflix.
This credits sequences is 90s AF and I love it. It reminds me of Are You Afraid of the Dark?.
I’m going to do this as a recap to try to capture the short-and-frantic mood of the anthology. I’ve written each recap as a spoiler-free intro and then a recap of the whole short with spoilers; the text is in white so you can highlight it.
1. ”Sweet Tooth”
#candyorgy
A babysitter and her boyfriend tell Mikey the urban legend of Sweet Tooth. Timmy is a kid whose parents don’t allow him to eat Halloween candy, and then he catches them having a candy orgy I guess. Chocolate IS the language of love. Timmy becomes the candy ghoul Sweet Tooth.
Spoilers: So the teens eat all of Mikey the candy (how? how?! I am so old I can’t remember what that was like) and then get murdered by Sweet Tooth.
2. “The Night Billy Raised Hell”
Ableist language and skeevy dudes abound!
A sister and her punk boyfriend convince her younger brother Billy to egg a neighbor’s house. Neighbor turns out to be literally Satan.
Spoilers: Billy shanks a dude, lights lawn on fire, steals a car, shoots folks, and terrorizes the neighborhood. He throws shit on the ground. He’s not part of your system. Wacky hijinks ensue! Turns out it was Mordecai all along, but Billy probably doesn’t get shot because he’s white.
Probably.
3. “Trick”
Adults are smoking weed and drinking, have to answer door for trick-or-treaters, le sigh. A lot of kids are dressing as pirates because they’re missing eyes, says our 4-20 loving friend. A teenage witch with chunky glasses comes to the door and fucking stabs Nelson (rum and cider, not weed guy) in the gut, like you do in this movie, I guess.
Millennials, am I right?
Spoilers: One of the adults tries to get to a car to drive him to the hospital and gets Caesar’d by a bunch of teens, the potsmoker gets blowtorched and force fed rat poison, and our sole survivor hides in the closet deleting photos of her friends brutalizing people and covered in blood. But the closet is a surgery rooms and the teens rescue a friend who is missing an eye.
PIRATES. MAN. THEY WERE ALL PIRATES BECAUSE THESE FOLKS ARE PULLING OUT EYES. TO WHAT END?
4. “The Weak and the Wicked”
Kid dressed a sheriff nomming on candy gets jumped by some ne’er-do-well teens, who try to burn his fees with cigarettes. A kid in a demon suit rolls up, tries to rescue the other kid because he thinks he can summon a demon.
Spoilers: The gang pursues him on bikes with metal music playing. He gets to his old trailer (one of those round ones) and it turns out the gang set his trailer on fire and murdered his parents when they were kids. Alice tries to light him on fire, but the demon finally turns up! Hooray.
5. “Grim Grinning Ghost”
Ableism~
A spooky tale at a Halloween party with GREAT COSTUMES: a disfigured woman, the grinning ghost, haunts people because people are ableist and gross. Shit, I’d haunt them too. The hostess’s daughter spooks easily! They got her goat!
Spoilers: On the drive home her car stalls. Y’all, do NOT SMOKE WHILE YOU’RE WORKING ON YOUR ENGINE OR SET YOUR PHONE TO BE CRUSHED BY THE HOOD. Our heroine has to walk through the dark, spooky-ass suburb full of Halloween decor. Just like in the story, she hears a cackle, doesn’t look behind her, and runs to her door, pursued by a ghost.
The cinematography in this one is very good, focusing on the SPACE BEHIND HER at home while she brushes her teeth. Like, I’m creeped out!
I guess everyone in town is watching zombie movies OH LOOK HERE’S OUR GHOST.
Maybe don’t watch this if you don’t like jump scares.
6. “Ding Dong”
Jack, dressed as Hansel, asks trick-or-treaters “Uh, would you like some of mein candies?” Bobbie, dressed as a witch in a pointy hat, holds a blonde braid.
Last year: Jack and Bobbie’s house. Bobbie is sad because it’s Halloween, which means kids are out but they have no children! But Jack dressed the pub up as Gretel, which I think is cute af, but Bobbie punches him turns into some pointy-fingered blood demon thing and screams, “Where is my child?”
Spoilers: This Halloween: Jack is dressed as Hansel, Bobbie is the witch and is playing some at Hannibal shit with showing the kids Gretel’s braid and ear that she “ate last so she could hear me chew.” She causally turns oven to 666???? The demon is chilling in the background when a little boy dressed as Hansel turns up with no parent. Jack alerts the kid’s mom, which makes Bobbie angry. Jack is like, “Maybe stop abusing me and also I had my tubes tied because of that?” But that blood demon is pissed and shoves Jacks into the oven and then melts. Why? I have no fucking idea. Women’s desire for babies turn them into abusive witches? Okay. Cool. Babies.
Also: WHAT HAPPENED TO THE PUPPER.
If this recap doesn’t make sense it’s because this short doesn’t make sense. I tried.
7. “This Means War”
Two neighbors are warring over who has the best Halloween decorations. The first one is a suburban-gay dad type with the cute gravestones and front yard cemetery. The second neighbor’s display is metal as heck with a lot of gore, punks, and drunks, and he’s scaring the kids! So they fight about the True Meaning of Halloween until Suburban Dad kirks out and destroys the sound system.
Spoilers: Then they destroy each other’s displays and start a fist fight. I’m so glad I left the suburbs. The neighbors and party-goers are all cheering them on UNTIL THEY IMPALE THEMSELVES ON A STAKE BY ACCIDENT AND I AM SO MAD. I WAS ENJOYING THIS.
8. “Friday the 31st”
There is some runny mascara here. Sexy Dorothy is running from Jason, ends up in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I’m not really exaggerating, the set looks like that with the meat hooks and the dead bodies.
Spoilers: Dorothy gets away from Leatherface but he javelins her. How is this not Texas Chainsaw? Because there are aliens. Cute tiny 90s aliens with pumpkins for trick or treat. Leatherface doesn’t have candy and squishes the alien, who claymations into Dorothy’s mouth and then zombifies her so she’s chasing Leatherface, who hides in the meat hook room. Acceptable. Things get all Black Knight with the two of them lopping off each other’s arms and heads. Then the alien beams back up. YEP.
9. “The Ransom of Rusty Rex”
Two bank robbers (whom I’ve dubbed Suspenders and Jawline) kidnap a rich kid who is out alone trick-or-treating dressed as a tiger. He’s Tiger Millionaire! So they put the kid in a bag, like you do, and call his dad (Jebediah Rex). The kid, Rusty, still has his mask on. Dad doesn’t want him back and hangs up on him.
Image: a kid in a red hoodie with a tiger mask on is tied to a chair.
Jawline, who is wearing a leather jacker, is on the phone with Rusty’s dad, who says not to call again; Suspenders, who is wearing a Henley shirt and suspenders AND A BELT, is eating a sucker from Rusty’s Halloween candy.
Spoilers: Rusty escapes, and attacks Suspenders. The kid is actually a demon (Mordecai? I bet it’s Mordecai from My Neighbor Satan). What are these two preternaturally attractive kidnappers to do? They wrap up the kid and plan to drop him in the swamp, but the monster cries like a cat. Feeling pity, they unwrap him, but Rusty pukes on Suspenders, so into the swamp he goes. Rusty returns shortly, and Jawline phones Dad, who tells him he’s has been held hostage by the creature for five years. Kidnappers set the creature on fire. “Fuck kidnapping, bro!” they cry, peeling off into the night. At a gas station, Jawline discovers that Suspenders has been decapitated by the creature. Well, fuck. So much for my hot felon ship.
10. “Bad Seed”
A MAN IS STABBING PUMPKINS NOW AND SQUEEZING THE SEEDS. I hear you trying to do that Halloween theme song shit, movie.
Spoilers: One of the pumpkins is eating and decapitating the guy carving it before skittling out the doggy door on pumpkin tentacles. Cops, it wasn’t an animal, it was AN EVIL JACK-O-LANTERN. “Has Forensic Bob seen this?” The sketch artist did a good chalk sketch of a tentacle pumpkin. In the neighborhood, Pirate Kevin (no eyepatch) is off knocking on doors for candy without Mom, but sees heckin’ gold in that thar jack-o-lantern, gets his hand bitten off and then gets eaten.
Image: police sketch of a jack-o-lantern with arms
Meanwhile at the police station, Det. McNally gets chewed out by her boss because Halloween is bringing in some weird shit and he needs her to round them out. Forensic Bob modeled those teeth, like a giant pumpkin… The pumpkin is attacking the suburbs and McNally is on the case. More Halloween music ensues at the SHRINE OF THE JACK-O-LANTERNS. Thanks to Forensic Bob, who throws McNally a shotgun to shoot that possessed pumpkin, she blows it up. They find a label on a piece of the pumpkin that reads “SUPER PUMPKIN.” McNally and FB go to Clover Corp to investigate the SUPER PUMPKINS and it is like the Archives in Ark of the Covenant up in there, but with pumpkins.
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This is an oddball film anthology that’s spooky enough for teens but not really scary-scary. The representation of women is okay, but nothing revolutionary, and, notably, only one of the directors (also the creator of the anthology), Axelle Carolyn, is a woman. While it wasn’t exploitative and the overt sexism was low except Satan and Bobbie, it also didn’t challenge any tropes.
Contains gore, blood, jump scares
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