This started out well with a likeable, albeit stock, bunch of teenage friends getting together for one last Halloween before departing for college. A nice "coming-of-age" tone is thus established with cosily familiar characters and a late 60s setting. There's the jock bullies, the older sister and a newcomer to the group. It's all looking like it should be a Goonies-like hoot. But then the story really gets going and what a hackneyed mess of clichés. The main storyline regards a girl who was basically tortured by her family and now exacts revenge by writing gruesome stories that immediately happen in real life. I've seen others calling this a narrative framing device, but really it's the bulk of the film. The stories within the film can barely be called stories - they are just incidents. A scarecrow comes to life and kills a boy by turning him into a scarecrow; another boy finds a toe in his soup and is chased and killed by a demonic hag; another boy is simply approached and absorbed by a bizarre bloated smiling creature. Occasionally the writers have tried to give these relevance by having characters remark something to the effect of "oh hey I remember this story from when I was a kid" but that's all. Basically the device gives the filmmakers carte blanche to chuck whatever lazy hokum they feel like onto the screen with some rough CGI to boot. There's no tension, no scares. The story about the girl writing the stories has some intrigue and mystery, although is resolved predictably and ludicrously. All of this is desperately uninspired stuff you've seen done elsewhere far better. At best this is a film that young teens might enjoy.
