Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman
The
synopsis for The Last Halloween (2014),
a short horror film based on the comic book of the same title by Mark
Thibodeau, got me: “As they go from house to house, four young
trick-or-treaters collect strange treats that could signal the end of
Halloween.”
What
are the “strange treats”? Why are they given? What do they
signify? Why might they “signal the end of Halloween”?
We
are introduced to the four trick-or-treaters, a ghost (Jake Goodman),
a witch (Zoe Fraser), the Grim Reaper (Drew Davis), and the devil
(Brebdan Heard), as they visit the first of the three houses shown in
the short.
A
knock at the front door of the first house summons a woman in a pink
knit cap (Angela Besharah). Without disengaging the chain-lock, she
opens her door a crack, peering warily through the gap. “Wait
here,” she orders, returning a moment later with the child's
“treat”: a can of pet food. “You be careful out there,” the
woman cautions her visitor. The ghost accepts the item without
protest, and the group of children move on.
At
this point, there is only a few hints that something is wrong: the
woman's odd behavior, her strange “treat,” and the cheapness of
the ghost's costume—a dirty sheet.
Other
clues emerge as the film progresses. There are no streetlights. The
next house the children visit, a dark, boarded-up ramshackle affair,
looks abandoned. Why would the trick-or-treaters waste their time
stopping at such a house? Perhaps they are about to play a “trick”?
Only
two of the children, Sam the devil and Janet the witch, appear bold
enough to knock at the door; both the ghost and the Grim Reaper wait
on the sidewalk in front of the property. The face of the homeowner
(Julian Richings), a man with pustules on his face, appears in a gap
between planks covering the doorway. “Aren't you a little late to
be out this young?” he asks, his inverted syntax another clue, as
is the condition of his residence, that all is not well in the
suburbs. “Especially with the—” he breaks off his thought,
gesturing instead, and disappears inside his house, saying he will
see what he can find.
Returning,
he admits, “It's not much, I'm afraid,” and drops a plastic bat
into the devil's plastic pail. Once again, the offering is accepted
without complaint. The man tells Sam that he should “manage more
than anyone,” since he is “the devil. Lucifer, Beelzebub, The
Horned One.” He cackles as his visitors depart.
The
adults whom the children visit seem increasingly disturbed. The woman
appeared wary, if not paranoid, and her “treat,” a can of pet
food, is bizarre, to say the least. However, she is dressed in
ordinary attire, the lights are on in her house, and the house itself
appears to be in good repair. She is concerned about the children's
safety, bidding them to “be careful.”
The
second adult has suffered physical harm, and he seems much less
mentally stable than the woman. He lives in an abandoned, boarded-up
house, without lights, and offers a plastic bat as a “treat.” His
speech includes inverted syntax. He alludes to some mysterious
incident, and seems to mistake Sam for the actual devil, calling him
“Lucifer.” “Beelzebub,” and “The Horned One.”
However, something is off about the children as well. They are not disturbed by the bizarre “treats” they are given, and they are not afraid of visiting a dark, boarded-up, seemingly abandoned house. They accept the odd behavior of the adults as though neither the adults' odd conduct nor their strange gifts are all that unusual.
The
third scene is the longest and most detailed. This time, the
trick-or-treaters, passing a sign labeled “EVACUATION ZONE,”
visit a house behind a tall wrought-iron fence. A bank of floodlights
illuminates as their approach to the property activates a motion
sensor.
On
the wall above a fireplace, rifles are mounted. A fire burns in the
fireplace. A made-up cot stands before the fireplace. A man observes
images of the children that are delivered to his computer through a
closed-circuit television camera. Outside, his own image appears on a
monitor, as he tells the children to “go away.” One of the
children, her image appearing on his own monitor, responds, “trick
or treat.”
A
young woman inside the house looks at a bassinet; it is empty except
for a teddy bear. The man tells his visitors to leave, warning them
that “bad things happen to trespassers.” The woman inside the
house looks down, from a second-story, through a lattice of boards;
outside, the trick-or-treaters see her watching them. Downstairs, the
man, armed, now, with a rifle, calls to the woman, “Kate! Get down
here!”
The children have not left; they continue to cry “trick or treat,” and the man continues to tell them to leave. Carrying a lantern and coughing into a handkerchief, the woman descends a flight of stairs; calling the man “Jack,” she says that maybe they should admit the children, as they could need help or might be hungry. Watching the monitor, he sees the children depart and tells the woman, Kate (Emily Alatalo), his wife, that they seem to be leaving. She coughs more, showing her husband the bruise on her neck.
Jack (Ron Basch) says they can't take any more chances, as it is not safe to “open the door to anyone anymore.” He argues, further, that the kids “could be infected” or “crazy,” pointing out that “they think it's Halloween.” Kate's reply, “I think it is Halloween,” suggests that it may be either Jake and the kids or Kate who is deluded. Kate, showing Jack the bruise on her neck, implies that nothing can protect them.
Jake
checks the monitor; when he turns around, Kate is gone. The front
door slams. The ghost trick-or-treater appears in the room, behind
Jack. Arming himself with his rifle, which he had set aside, Jack
demands to know what the ghost has done with his wife. When the child
does not answer, Jack tells him to take food and leave, but the ghost
says, “It's too late, Jaaaccckkk.”
Approaching
the trick-or-treater, Jack pulls the sheet off the child, only to discover that,
beneath it, is an actual ghost (Ali Adatia). The other children, now
adults, appear, repeating, “It's too late, Jack.” The child in
the devil costume becomes an actual devil (Adrian G. Griffiths), and
the other two trick-or-treaters also transform into the figures
represented by their respective costumes, those of the Grim Reaper
(Alastair Forbes) and the witch (Kristina Uranowski).
As
they surround him, the front door opens, and Jack sees Kate, kneeling
on the porch. After a moment, she vanishes, Surrounding him, the
monsters move in on him, and the Grim Reaper embraces him. “Happy
Halloween,” it says.
The
children leave the house, in their original costumes, as fires burn
in the windows. After one of the fires in an upstairs window
explodes, the camera pans up, showing that other houses, for miles
around, are also on fire, as are high-rise buildings in the city
beyond.
This
short does a good job of introducing bizarre elements that become
explicable over a period of time, as details accumulate which, when
combined, provide a context for interpreting the whole situation of
which the individual elements are each but a part. In other words,
the introductions of these details are like the pieces of a jigsaw
puzzle (the film as a whole) that the audience (following the lead of
director Marc Roussel) put together, incident by incident, until the
whole picture is discernible and intelligible as a unified and
coherent whole.
This
initially piecemeal delivery of specific, isolated details also
heightens the horrific tone of the film, its mystery, and its
suspense. Each incident is disquieting in itself: the wary woman, the
madman, and the housebound survivalist are each, in their own ways,
disturbing.
As
we move from house to house, the domiciles become worse and worse, as
do the inhabitants. What appears abnormal (canned pet food for a
Halloween “treat,” inverted syntax and facial injuries, a dead or
abducted baby, and a young wife wasting away of some disease while her
husband and protector slowly loses contact with reality)
seems, in the world of the film, to be normal, while that which is
normal (trick-or-treating, wearing traditional Halloween costumes,
visiting neighborhood houses on Halloween) appears, increasingly, to
be abnormal.
The
world is upside-down and inside-out, and it's every man, woman, and
child for him- or herself. At first, we have no idea what has
happened to the suburbanites the children visit. Then, a clue: the
“EVACUATION ZONE” sign. There has been an evacuation. Apparently,
for whatever reason, the residents who remain in the suburbs have
been left behind. Now, they are facing the consequences: paranoia,
madness, self-isolation, distrust of others, sickness, and death.
The
parallels to the coronoavirus pandemic are striking, although
unintended. (The film was released in 2014; the pandemic began in
2020). Neighbors isolate themselves from everyone else, staying in
their homes. They are wary, even paranoid. One couple takes extreme
measures, hoarding food and taking refuge in their home.
Not everyone
survives: the bassinet is empty, as are many of the houses in the
neighborhood. Food seems to be in short supply: the kids' “treats”
include canned pet food and a plastic bat. The crisis is not local;
it affects other communities, including at least one nearby city, and
there has been an organized evacuation of the affected areas. These
similarities, of course, make the short even eerier and more
disturbing, even if they have no direct relationship to the
coronaviruss pandemic.
Just
as the coronavirus has brought out the worst in some people—those
who hoard essential supplies, engage in price gouging, spit on
produce, ignore government directives for minimizing health risks,
boast of their luxurious accommodations, and complain about minor
inconveniences—the catastrophe that has befallen the communities in
The Last Halloween
brings out the worst in some of the movie's cast of characters. Jack
refuses to open his door to the trick-or-treaters, refuses to help
them, refuses to share his horde of food with them, is prepared to
kill them.
The children themselves are transformed into monsters.
They are unforgiving toward Jack. They have laid waste to the
neighborhood and, the end of the film suggests, to others communities
as well. Under the right—or the wrong—circumstances, anyone, the
movie implies, could be a Jack, a ghost, a Grim Reaper, a witch, or a
devil.
On
a positive note, however, it is possible, also, to be generous, even
if wary: the woman who gives the ghost a can of her pet food offers
something from her larder that she could have eaten herself. The type
of the item—pet food—suggests the desperation in which she finds
herself: she is so hungry and so low on food supplies that she is
willing to eat pet food. Despite such extremity, she is,
nevertheless, willing to share what she can. Her act of
self-sacrifice, although bizarre, is also heroic. She represents the
opposite extreme of Jack, the alternative to his self-centeredness,
which excludes any others, except his wife, whom, ironically, he is
unable to save.