Tales of Halloween (2015)

Tales of Halloween arrives as a ten-segment anthology, a single suburban neighborhood dismantled by ghouls, demons, and one very determined pumpkin. The year is 2015, the horror-comedy revival is thriving, and this film wants nothing to do with the cultural conversations swirling around it. Its ambitions extend to severed heads, possessed trick-or-treaters, and a demon who runs down children in a hijacked car. We are in the presence of entertainment, unburdened by purpose.

The ensemble includes a few non-white performers, Booboo Stewart among them, and the film never pauses to remark on the fact. A handful of segments place women at the center, and one, Axelle Carolyn's 'Grim Grinning Ghost,' comes from a female director. These are matters of casting and staffing, not arguments. Women are killed, women do the killing, and no lesson is drawn from either outcome. The nearest brush with commentary arrives in 'Bad Seed,' where a killer jack-o'-lantern carries the label of Clover Corp's '100% organic super-pumpkin.' A corporation has loosed genetically modified produce upon a suburb. It is a gag, delivered and abandoned, with no appetite for the systemic critique it grazes.

Elsewhere there is little to classify. No LGBTQ characters cross the frame. No racial themes are engaged. The environment goes unmentioned, which is a relief. Body positivity finds no purchase when a disfigured ghost exists to be feared. Neurodivergence never surfaces. History is not revised, because history is never invoked. The sermonizing instinct sits near zero, since an anthology devoted to gore has no congregation to address. It is a refreshingly incurious object, and it knows exactly what it is.