Trick ‘r Treat at 20: Opening Night at the Vancouver Horror Show

Writer/Director Michael Dougherty with Meghan Hemingway at VHS 2026. Photo by Chris Tizya

The Vancouver Horror Show kicked off its first night with an anniversary screening of Trick 'r Treat, and I'm glad I got to see it this way. I'd never watched the film before. First time, big screen, great projection, and a director who showed up with the DCP (the Digital Cinema Package, basically the master file a theatre projects from) in hand.

Michael Dougherty directed it, and the cast is stacked: Anna Paquin, Brian Cox and Dylan Baker among them. It came out in 2007 and slowly built a cult following. Twenty years on, it's treated like a Halloween staple.

An anthology that actually ties together

This is an anthology, but not the usual kind where a handful of stories sit side by side and never touch. Here the stories are woven into each other, and the way the film opens and then pulls everything together at the end is impressive. Think Pulp Fiction. Dougherty also cited Magnolia and a couple of other movies with that same braided structure as inspirations, and he pulled it off really well.

Meet Sam

Dougherty added a teaser at the start of the screening featuring Sam, the film's little trick-or-treater. He looks like a kid in a pumpkin mask, until the mask comes off and it turns out there's an actual pumpkin underneath. Sam goes around Halloween night delivering justice to people, and that's really the whole engine of the movie.

The origin is what stuck with me. When Dougherty was a kid, he was chased down, beaten up and had his candy taken by other kids one Halloween. What really bothered him, though, was the crowd of adults who watched it happen and did nothing. He invented Sam as a way to process that memory.

The long road to the screen

Because the film was shot in Vancouver, a lot of the cast still lives here. Some dropped by, said hello to the crowd and took questions alongside Dougherty and a producer. The theme of the Q&A was how hard it was to get this thing made and seen.

Dougherty was a screenwriter working on huge Hollywood productions, and the studio just couldn't get its head around the concept. One of the notes he got was, essentially, who wants to see vampires, werewolves and zombies? Test audiences didn't like it either. The Cabin in the Woods was going through the same thing around the same time, getting shelved and pushed. Now both are still being talked about, decades later. Horror was a tough sell back then, and it's a good reminder of how wrong the early reactions can be.

The festival so far

It was a fun crowd and the Q&A went great. The vibe at the Vancouver Horror Show is relaxed, and I'm really enjoying it. I'm back tonight for Ithaca, a Hammer film.

If you haven't seen Trick 'r Treat, fix that before Halloween. I also recorded a video recap of the night for members, and this post is the written version.