Hellions

* spoilers *

Dora just finds out she's pregnant when evil trick or treaters assault her house while she's alone, handing out candy. Conceptually, this film is fun and unique. The trick or treaters are kind of like Sam from Trick 'r Treat, eternally young, monstrous, and basically immortal. Their only weakness is salt. I loved the dark humor they brought to the film and how twisted their attacks were. They did an excellent job of being chaotic, mischief making trick or treaters with a murderous twist. Their mythology is unlike anything I've seen before. They basically find a pregnant woman, terrorize her, accelerate her pregnancy, and feed the baby her blood, making it into one of them. It's a cool concept that could have been amazing, but the plot got convoluted and weird as it goes along.

The film was bogged down by moronic characters, weird visuals, bad writing, and the ambiguous ending. Dora and her father proved to be so stupid through the course of the film that I wished they would die. Dora discovers that salt is the trick or treaters' weakness, but does she carry around the salt for the rest of the movie to protect herself? No. The father also chooses horrible courses of action that are textbook horror movie mistakes and it just isn't interesting in any way. The last half of the film is kind of reddish because of the blood moon, but it looks like faded purple or pink. It's just weird and distracting. After the premise is established, the plot just goes into confused mess mode. I didn't know where it was going and I stopped caring by the end.

The ending is ambiguous, which I usually don't mind. However, it just doesn't matter to me either way. The entire film is a dream (sigh) and it's unclear if Dora had a baby and is looking at it sadly in the hospital nursery or she had an abortion and is looking sadly at a baby that's not hers. If it was her baby, maybe she was giving it up for adoption or she was sad that her life is now ruined as a teen mother. This makes the most sense with the rest of the plot. If she had an abortion, I guess she's sad about it and the whole film was a surreal pro-life PSA, which would make me angry if I had any strong emotions left by the end of the film. This is the ending that makes the least sense because she just had a bizarre dream about evil children killing everyone she loves. Wouldn't that be her subconscious telling her that her life would basically be ruined? She could very well lose her boyfriend, her parents, and her friends due to going through with the pregnancy. Either way, the ending is underwhelming and I couldn't bring myself to care about Dora and her fate or her decisions.

I expected this film to be an addition to my yearly Halloween viewing schedule (along with Halloween, The Houses October Built, and Trick 'r Treat), but it just didn't measure up. The film had a lot of potential, but the execution was lacking and confusing. Not recommended.

My rating: 2/5 fishmuffins