'Trick 'r Treat' director celebrates the cult classic on its 15th anniversary: 'We definitely kill more kids than most horror movies'

Fifteen years ago, horror fans were treated to their first taste of Michael Dougherty's wickedly funny horror anthology, Trick 'r Treat. But getting his feature filmmaking debut out into the world proved to be the real trick for the writer-director. Although the Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures-backed film was completed in 2007 — and had its first public screening on Dec. 9 of that year at the annual Butt-Numb-a-Thon hosted by Ain't It Cool News founder Harry Knowles — it took an additional two years of behind the scenes battles for general audiences to see Trick 'r Treat. And even then, they had to watch it on DVD after Warner Bros. declined to put the movie in theaters.

"I was crushed," Dougherty tells Yahoo Entertainment, reliving the moment when he learned of the film's fate. "Just completely, utterly crushed. That decision came after a year of me hauling the movie around to different film festivals — I personally had to carry these heavy metallic film canisters to festivals around the world! Even though we would collect all these great reviews, they fell on deaf ears [at the studio]. I was constantly holding out hope that we would get at least a limited theatrical release. We were not even given that."

But just like the best horror movie boogeymen, Dougherty and Trick 'r Treat's mascot, the burlap sack-masked kid Sam (played by Quinn Lord), survived to fight another day. As the film celebrates the big 1-5, it has become a contemporary scary movie favorite, one that's always finding new audiences every Halloween, while also bringing back existing fans. Trick 'r Treat's afterlife has proven popular enough that Dougherty — whose other credits include Godzilla: King of the Monsters and Krampus — is ready and able to talk sequel. "We're actively developing a sequel now," he teases. "Everyone is very excited and wants to see it happen, but I'm also very protective of the title, so we don't want to rush it."

In an expansive, lively conversation, Dougherty shares the full story of Trick 'r Treat's long path from animated short to cult classic — including an abandoned version that would have been helmed by some of the biggest names in horror — and why he had so much fun killing kids.

I love that Trick 'r Treat shares the same origin story as South Park: Both started off as short animated movies that became viral hits in a pre-viral age. How did you come up with the original short, Season's Greetings, and how did it lead to the feature?

I was a film student at New York University, and it was time to do my senior thesis film. It was the summer of ’95, and I was banging my head against a wall trying to come up with something that was feasible on a student budget. So I tapped into my love of Halloween! I had been doodling a creepy character in my notebooks for awhile, and I looked at it and said, 'Well why not him? Why not Sam?'"

Sam was created out of a strange mixture of influences — everything from John Carpenter's Halloween to the Charlie Brown Halloween special. After I graduated, I submitted the film to a lot of different film festivals, and it got a lot of play. This was all before the internet really took off, so I was shipping out VHS tapes and it became a really excellent calling card. It got the attention of [special effects legend] Stan Winston, who saw it and asked me to come to L.A. for a meeting. He was the first one to say, "You know, you should really get into feature films. When you're ready, pitch me some ideas or send me a script."

I had a handful of preexisting short films I had written at NYU, so I just mashed them together into a screenplay and said: "This is my feature!" [Laughs.]

Which was the first story you came up with out of the segments included in the film?

The Dylan Baker story, "Principal." That one followed the rules of one of my NYU assignments: two characters, one location. The original intention was for me to make it as a live action short film, because it was easy to translate. "Halloween School Bus Massacre" was the only one that was new. The others existed already in very rough and slightly different forms.

Trick 'r Treat is obviously inspired by older horror anthologies like Creepshow, but it's interesting that you decided to forgo the framing device that those movies generally had.

Yeah, that was definitely intentional. And in my original script, the stories weren't intertwined as much, although there were still moments where they overlapped. You got to see the same story from the point of view of a different character. But in terms of its original structure, it was similar to something like the Doug Liman movie Go. Even going into shooting, we were going to stick to that. It was only when we got to the editing room that we realized that starting and stopping four stories like that almost makes the film feel really long! Your brain has to reset, and then start up again, so even though the first cut was only 90 minutes, it felt like two hours or longer. So it was proposed that we reshuffle the deck so that all the different balls are kept in the air throughout.

Walking through each segment, the opening sequence with Leslie Bibb and Tahmoh Penikett feels like your explicit homage to the first scene from the original Halloween, right down to the first-person point of view camera.

You know, it wasn't conscious! In some ways, it was more influenced by the the opening scene of Scream, and the idea that you could do this quick, tense and suspenseful cold open. In hindsight, I look at it now and go, "Of course, Halloween is an influence!" The house itself even looks like the Myers house. But it wasn't something I was consciously trying to do at the time. I always imagined that Sam and Michael Myers were buddies. [Laughs]

At one point, John Carpenter was actually attached to direct a segment of the film. The original incarnation that I talked about with Stan was a very traditional horror anthology, so he went out and got George Romero, Tobe Hooper, Carpenter and himself attached to each do a segment. But every studio in town passed on the package! They were like, "This is too old fashioned." It was a really bitter lesson in how shortsighted the system can be.

Would you have liked to have seen your stories interpreted by those other filmmakers? Or are you glad that you got to direct the whole film?

I mean, that's an interesting multiverse question, right? If I had a portal to another timeline, it would be interesting to see that! But what this movie has taught me over and over and over again is how disappointment can lead to better things. Crushing disappointment in the moment can lead to better outcomes down the road. I was definitely taught about patience and persistence.

For "Principal," it's interesting that you cast Dylan Baker as a character who is kidnapping kids. This was obviously a few years removed from his performance in Happiness where he played a child predator — were you playing into that movie a little bit by casting him?

No, I had been a fan of his going back to Planes, Trains and Automobiles. I'm pretty sure I saw Happiness after the fact. I was almost worried! I was like, "Oh no, is this too similar? You know what — f*** it." [Laughs]

Baker's character uses poisoned candy to capture his prey. Every Halloween, there are always hyperbolic news stories warning parents about that exact thing. Does it tickle you that you've contributed to that urban legend?

Absolutely! One of my favorite urban legends is the idea that people are spiking candy. If you actually take the time to research that folklore, you find out very quickly that there's only one proven case and it was actually a father trying to poison his own son for insurance money. Outside of that, I don't think there's any actual cases of that happening. I find it fascinating, because it's an example of urban legends and folklore adding this little element of danger to what seems like an innocent holiday. Halloween is kind of an insane holiday: we literally tell our kids, "Don't talk to strangers, and don't accept candy from strangers. Except for this one night! All those rules are out the window — go for it."

The poisoned candy leads to a gnarly bit of projectile vomiting that's a blast to watch.

I'll never forget the first time I saw the Lard Ass scene in Stand by Me with the mass projectile vomit. So in this case, I knew it was going to be a shocking and funny way to have a character get knocked off. In my initial cut, the vomit lasted twice as long, and that was intentional because I knew they were gonna force me to cut it down. It was a blast to shoot, and in fact that vomit was actually fully edible! It had a mint chocolate flavor to it. I didn't see anybody on set gulping it down, but they were definitely sampling it. [Laughs]

How did you come up with the idea for killing off a busload of kids in "Halloween School Bus Massacre"?

My original inspiration went back to first grade and my first time being put on a school bus and shipped off to school. I just hated it. I grew up in Ohio, and every morning I had to wake up and walk to the school bus — it felt like a death march. And, you know, school buses are such funny little microcosms, because you take all these monstrous little kids and throw them onto a bus without any seatbelts and very little adult supervision. It's just not a pleasant experience, so writing that was very cathartic, just to throw the bus over a cliff and let it drown. [Laughs]

I like the way that segment taps into the "children are monsters" idea. Sometimes kids are off-limits as victims in modern horror movies.

The funny thing is that there was a lot of pushback from the studio about that. They were like, "We can't do that!" And I thought, "Have you guys seen horror movies? Have you seen Jaws? There's an 11-year-old kid who gets f***ing eaten by a shark!" It's basically a rite of passage to see kids in danger. But for whatever reason, the people who have greenlight power get really skittish about it. Now granted, we definitely kill more kids that most horror movies. I don't know if there's a record, but we're definitely up there!

"Surprise Party" follows a group of young women looking for dates for a Halloween party, and they later turn out to be werewolves that tear those guys to shreds. Did that segment come out of a desire to play around with horror's traditional gender roles?

That actually happened relatively late in the writing process. Originally it was about a group of 20-somethings that were both male and female. It occurred to me that if we wanted a better twist, it should be a group of women. Traditionally, horror movies are all about exploiting women and turning them into victims until the one final girl who gets away. So I thought it would be fun to play with those expectations. Also, every major character in a werewolf movie tends to be a dude. Outside of The Howling and Ginger Snaps and a few other ones, we haven't often seen a really cool female werewolf and I wanted to take the opportunity to shake things up.

Speaking of The Howling, what movies influenced the werewolf design?

We definitely wanted them to have sex appeal, and a certain feminine quality to them. We worked really closely with [creature designer] Patrick Tatopoulos to try to achieve that both in the transformation and in the final appearance of the wolves themselves. I think the transformation is what really helps sell it: this idea that it starts as a seductive striptease transcends what you typically expect for a werewolf.

Brian Cox stars in the last segment, "Sam," as a mean old man who gets attacked by Sam in his home. It must be fun for you to see him play another foul-mouthed a**hole on Succession right now.

I don't know, I feel like Brian has made like a pretty great living playing cantankerous old men! [Laughs] It's funny that he's become a pop culture icon as Logan Roy, because I'm like: "Where have you guys been? Brian's been giving iconic performances for decades now!" I guess I just assumed he was always iconic.

That's a very stunt-heavy segment. Was it the hardest one to film?

Strangely enough, it was the easiest one! You gotta remember that this was my first feature, so by the time we got to Brian's story — which we shot last — I had finally found my feet. I found the rhythm of how to do this. I also storyboarded the hell out of it: the whole sequence was boarded out, so I had a pretty clear idea of what I needed to do. And Quinn had a blast, to the point where his parents told me that he was staying in character at home! He was hiding under beds and jumping out of closets to continue Sam's mischievous ways.

Something that occurred to me on my most recent re-watch is that all of the stories in Trick 'r Treat are morality tales at a certain level. Did you intentionally write them that way?

Oh, 100%. I was heavily inspired by fairy tales and myths growing up, and the real monsters in all of those stories are humans. So in the movie, Dylan Baker is the real evil, and the kids trying to torment Rhonda in "Halloween School Bus Massacre" are the real villains. If anything, it's the monsters in the movie that are the heroes.

Is that the sort of thing that you'd like to see more of in modern horror? Some of the movies we see now can feel reactionary and regressive in terms of their deeper themes.

I think about that a lot, because I look for horror movies that really challenge the status quo in terms of what's good and what's evil. That's why it's so hard for me to watch horror movies where the good guy is the one holding the crucifix and waving it at a vampire or a demon. Anytime that the roles of good and evil are very traditional, I roll my eyes, because that's not the case anymore. It's not the truth — things are way more complicated than that. So yeah, I always appreciate it when ideas of morality are challenged in a horror movie, because it indicates that the filmmaker has a point of view.

You mentioned the structure of the film changed in the editing room. Were there any other major alterations?

It was mostly a matter of intermingling the first three stories. For example, "Surprise Party" was always going to be the third one, but we found that if we moved part of it up to the top of the movie, the audience was a little bit more hooked. "Sam" was always meant to be the finale of the piece, so we kept that there from the start. But there was one cut that someone at Warner Bros. requested that really annoyed me. There were certain voices in the peanut gallery who felt Sam was maybe too cute to be truly scary. So for about a week, there was a cut where he was completely cut out of the movie with the exception of Brian's story! All those little beats where he shows up in other stories were just gone. It was heartbreaking, but thankfully everyone came to their senses. After we did that cut, everyone looked at it and said: "This is a disaster." [Laughs]

Apart from the structure of the film, was tone ever an issue with the studio? Did you have to fight them over whether it would be PG-13 or an R-rated film?

No, we never talked about PG-13, at least to my recollection. We were all willing to embrace that it's an R-rated movie. But tone was something that got debated a lot. The challenge in post-production is always keeping your movie together and aiming for that North Star you want to be sailing towards. That's also where you'll constantly be challenged and forced to reckon with all the pieces of the movie as they exist. It can really wear you down, because you want to be open to collaboration and good ideas, but what counts as a good idea is very subjective.

I will say that Legendary Pictures was always very supportive and willing to listen and to collaborate. But there was definitely a long period where I just didn't know if it was a good movie anymore because the test screenings didn't go well, and there were certain players Warner Bros. who were not fans of the film to say the least. So it felt like an impossible battle at times, but here we are today!

Do you see an equivalence between your experience being sent straight to DVD and horror movies that go straight to steaming now? Can those movies hope to build a fanbase in the same way Trick 'r Treat has?

Well, in 2009 we had the advantage of a less-crowded marketplace. I do remember that Netflix was one of the first places where a lot of people saw the movie. This would have been around 2010 or so that it was on there and a lot of people got introduced to it. But there's so much content now, so I don't know how we would do if we were released straight to streaming. We've all had the experience these days where some movie gets touted as this big streaming release, and it has like a week or two where it's water cooler talk. And then it just kinds of fades away. I think we just had the advantage of being something that people were wanting to see and had heard about [from festivals], so when it finally did get released, everybody just snatched it up.

It just feels like there's so much about our entertainment these days that's ephemeral. So to be part of a movie that keeps bringing back year after year is wonderful. Trick 'r Treat is only showing continued growth: I've seen the numbers and the charts, and it only gets more popular as people discover it. At the time we made it, trying to do a quirky, left of center horror comedy anthology was hard. But once we got it out into the world and screened it for general audiences, that's when everything started to feel right.

Trick 'r Treat is currently streaming on AMC+.