Review: All Hallows' Eve (2013)

All Hallows' Eve (2013)

Not rated

Score: 3 out of 5

All Hallows' Eve is less a singular film than it is a collection of three horror shorts tied together after the fact by a wraparound, two of which writer/director Damien Leone had previously made separately in 2008 and 2011 and one of which he made for this movie. Watching it today, after Leone has gone on to far greater success with the Terrifier films that he spun off from this, I found it to be a rough and uneven film but one where you could still tell that this guy had some serious talent. The segments range from acceptable if clichéd to simply dull and forgettable, but the framing device elevates them, the special effects are horrifying and especially well done for a low-budget indie production, and the recurring villain Art the Clown is a fuckin' frightening little bastard whose use throughout the film lent it an eerie feeling. Overall, it's only a film I'd recommend if you're a fan of the Terrifier series or looking to get into it (as I am), but if you're either of those things, and can stomach some seriously mean-spirited shit, definitely check it out.

The film starts with a babysitter named Sarah taking care of two kids, Timmy and Tia, on Halloween night after they come home from trick-or-treating, where Timmy discovers an unmarked VHS tape in his bag of candy. Timmy and Tia both want to see what's on it, and despite Sarah's protests, she gives in and throws it on, the contents of the tape being the three horror shorts at the center of this film -- which turn out to be far more real than Sarah ever anticipated. It's a simple but effective framing device that does a good job explaining how three mostly unrelated short films were gathered into one movie, and I slowly found myself getting more and more unnerved as it went on. The film's first segment began life as a 2008 short film titled The 9th Circle, and revolves around a woman at a train station who is kidnapped by Art the Clown and taken to be sacrificed by a Satanic cult that inhabits the tunnels beneath the station. It's a simple cult story barring Art's presence in it at the beginning, but it's an effective one, keeping its real monster in the shadows until the end and serving up plenty of claustrophobic scares capped off by some gnarly special effects. The third segment, meanwhile, is the original 2011 Terrifier short film that became the basis for the whole series, and it is a beast. Leone breaks out every low-budget indie filmmaker trick in the book as he makes Art into an unrelenting, inescapable, and darkly humorous and twisted figure who's not only killing people but enjoying every bit of it. He may be a silent slasher, but Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees he ain't; Mike Giannelli's performance leaves him brimming with a sadistic personality conveyed through his facial expressions, his mannerisms, and the props he brings out as he torments the people he's trying to kill, while some of the shit he pulls (especially to the protagonist of the third segment) takes the icky, misogynistic undertones that have long been read into the slasher genre and makes them an explicit part of his character, all the better to make me hate his ass more. And when the film wrapped up and the horror came for the babysitter Sarah who thought she was just watching a movie, it managed to get under my skin. There's a reason why Art's the one on the poster and why he became the breakout character.

So why, then, did the second segment, the one that Leone made to bring this movie up to feature length, have to be such hot garbage? It tried to stand on its own two feet as a segment without Art, with a story about a woman being harassed and abducted by alien visitors in her home, only to shoehorn in a reference to him that had nothing to do with the rest of the segment at the literal last minute. The acting isn't necessarily great at any point in this movie, but it felt especially hokey here, with this being largely a one-woman show in which the leading lady was hideously overacting throughout. The alien's look was a cool take on the classic "Grey alien" concept, but it was unfortunately undermined by its goofy movements, particularly how it constantly waved its arms to its side as it walked. It felt like I was watching a completely different, far lesser film from the one around it. Sarah even comments on how bad it is, and while that does admittedly improve the wraparound, it doesn't change the fact that, much like Sarah, I had to spend about fifteen minutes watching it.

The Bottom Line

It's an uneven film, but it's also a short one that never overstayed its welcome and ended on a good, dark note. There's really no "safe" introduction to the Terrifier series given the kind of vile character and grisly subject matter it's built around, but this is as good as any.