TRICK: HORROR FILM REVIEW

Director: Patrick Lussier
Writers: Patrick Lussier & Todd Farmer
Starring: Omar Epps, Jamie Kennedy, Ellen Adair, Kristina Reyes and Tom Atkins

A no-nonsense detective tries to track down a mass murderer named Trick, who is terrorizing a small town

Trick opens at a Halloween house party where kids play spin the bottle, only with a knife in place of a bottle. When the knife falls on Patrick ‘Trick’ Weaver, the quiet kid in the pumpkin mask (that and the casting of Tom Atkins are nice nods to Halloween III: Season of the Witch), things turn grisly quick as he lashes out, slashing his way through the group of teenagers. But Trick is quickly subdued, with Cheryl (Kristina Reyes) and Troy (Max Miller) surviving.

Detective Mike Denver (Omar Epps) and Sheriff Lisa Jayne (Ellen Adair) get the case and go to the hospital to interrogate Trick. But in a show of superhuman strength Trick breaks loose and cuts through several nurses. Det. Denver and the Sheriff catch up to Trick, shooting him several times and sending him plummeting out a four-story window. When they race down to find his body...it’s gone. So, in the first 15 minutes this killer has already gone full Michael Myers.

And really that’s my biggest criticism of the film, it’s hard to raise the stakes from there. The body is never recovered, but the case is closed. However, Det. Denver believes the killer’s still out there. Similar murders occur every Halloween after that, different masks, but the same M.O. Everyone writes them off as copycats, but Denver knows Trick is still out there. After a few years of murders (including some clever booby-trap kills and a healthy number of decapitations), Trick returns to the small town where it all started for one final bloodbath.

There’s lots of fun nods and winks for horror fans, Tom Atkins runs the local diner, screenwriter Todd Farmer has a cameo as a deputy, and the movement of the killer is very reminiscent of Ghostface (Lussier edited Scream 1, 2 & 3). But it all feels like repetitive serial killer cat-and-mouse scenarios where the killer constantly takes the good guys unawares, over and over. It does finally culminate in a clever plot twist (which I won’t divulge). Unfortunately, it’s too little, too late.

For the die-hard slasher fans, I’d say check it out.

2.5 out of 5

​Review by Kyle Hintz