Trick 'r Treat

Sam, the boy in the burlap mask, was not invented for Michael Dougherty’s film. Dougherty had used him in Season’s Greetings, an animated short from 1996 later added to the DVD as an extra. The school bus episode began as something else: set in a cemetery, the twist being that the girl had forgotten she was dead herself. Dougherty judged that reveal worn out, rewrote the episode, and put the drowned children in the quarry in its place. The film was meant to reach cinemas in October 2007. Sam toys and a comic book adaptation were already in shops when Warner Bros. postponed the date indefinitely. Dougherty says he never got a straight answer, and that one thing he was told was the studio being uncomfortable with how many children die in it. The 12 million dollar production sat in the vault two years, then went straight to DVD in October 2009 with almost no advertising. It toured festivals meanwhile, taking the audience award at Screamfest in 2008 and a silver one at Toronto After Dark. Shooting was in Vancouver. A good fit if you want the four stories ordered by where they cross rather than by clock, the opening scene landing at the end. Not for viewers who cannot take the bus episode turning dead children into a punchline.