Yeah... no thanks.
A 2013 horror anthology film directed by Damien Leone.
It's a quiet Halloween night, and Sarah is babysitting her friend's children, Timmy and Tia. She finds a videotape in Timmy's bag, which contains three tales of murder and mayhem all linked together by a Monster Clown known only as Art. As the night goes on, the line between reality and fantasy begins to blur as Art slowly creeps his way into our world.
An In Name Only sequel (which shares a few common elements with the first) was released in 2015. A spinoff named after the third short, Terrifier, was released in 2018.
All Hallows' Eve contains examples of:
- Alien Abduction: The second segment, Something in the Dark.
- An Arm and a Leg: There's quite a lot of dismemberment in this movie.
- Ax-Crazy: Art is a murderous, sociopathic Monster Clown who displays a clear and sadistic sense of joy when he mutilates and terrorizes his victims.
- Big Bad: Art the Clown, who is using the tape to enter reality and has a hand in all the chaos in the shorts themselves.
- Blood Is the New Black: At the end of the movie, Art is covered in blood.
- Boom, Headshot!: Happens to the driver who rescues the costume designer.
- Breast Attack: Besides having all her limbs amputated and misogynistic slurs carved into her, the costume designer also had her breasts removed.
- Bullying a Dragon: Unaware of who exactly he's dealing with, the attendant throws Art out of the gas station and threatens to call the cops on him. This comes back to bite him in the ass ... with a hacksaw.
- Butt-Monkey: Tia. Timmy doesn't treat her with much respect, and Art seems to enjoy tormenting her in particular.
- Children Are Innocent: Averted. Both Tia and Timmy have seen some really disturbing things on the Internet.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Art loves delivering these. That is, except when he has something far worse in mind for his victims.
- Deadpan Snarker: Sarah.Timmy: Yeah, he was great. I liked when he honked his horn at the lady.
Sarah: Yeah, that was hysterical. - Death by Irony: Timmy finds Art to be funny, and laughs at Tia for being frightened by him. Guess who kills him?
- Death of a Child: Every child in the movie dies.
- Despair Event Horizon: When Sarah discovers the dead bodies of the children, starts screaming hysterically.
- Diabolus ex Nihilo: The alien. It's the main antagonist of the second segment and makes a brief appearance in the wraparound, but it's so out of left field and doesn't match up with the rest of the movie at all.
- Downer Ending:
- "The 9th Circle": Casey is raped by Satan.
- "Something in the Dark": The alien drags Caroline away to an unknown, but definitely not pleasant, fate.
- "Terrifier": The costume designer is dismembered and mutilated by Art.
- Framing story: Sarah saves herself from Art (or at least manages to stall him), but is too late to save the children, and is likely to either face charges for the murders or be killed herself.
- Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Sarah, Tia, and Timmy.
- Event Title
- Eye Scream: The costume designer does this to Art himself, with one of the scalpels from his whip.
- Evil Is Hammy: He may not have any speaking lines, but Mike Gianelli is clearly having a blast playing Art. And it's terrifying.
- Fate Worse than Death: The woman from the Terrifier segment is cut up and left limbless on a table. And Art spares her.
- Faux Affably Evil: Despite a lack of any speaking lines, Art could be considered this. He dresses up as a clown and acts the part until he decides to drop the façade altogether. In The 9th Circle, he gives Casey a flower, which has a Creepy Cockroach crawling out of it. After drugging her, he waves at her as she slips into unconsciousness.
- For the Evulz: Being a Silent Antagonist, Art never gives an explanation for why he does what he does, but his body language, mimed laughter, and overall mannerisms give little if any other interpretation to his motives.
- The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: During the end credits, Art walks out from behind a pillar in a dimly-lit boiler room, and quickly tiptoes towards the TV screen,
staring at the viewer. - Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: The alien. Even Damien admits he only threw that segment in as filler.
- Gorn: Primarily in the wraparound segment (at least, at the end), The 9th Circle, and Terrifier.
- The Greys: Appears to be what the scuba-diving alien is in Something in the Dark, though instead of having grey skin, it's wearing a mask with stereotypical alien features.
- Halloween Episode: As you may have gleaned from the title, the framing story does indeed take place on Halloween night.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Near the end of Terrifier, a couple of tools fall off of Art's makeshift whip. The costume designer grabs them and stabs him in the eye with one, and through the back with the other.
- Hope Spot: A few of them.
- In The 9th Circle, Casey escapes from the cleaver-wielding monster, and it looks like she has a chance to get out. Then she runs into a hobo who is actually a demon that drags her to the witch coven to be raped by the Devil.
- In Terrifier, the girl appears to kill or at least severely wound Art, and gets in a car with a stranger. But Art, who is very much alive, catches up with them and shoots the good samaritan in the head.
- Sarah destroys the tape just as Art is about to kill her, seemingly stopping him and sending him back to wherever he came from. Unfortunately, he murders the children just moments later.
- Hollywood Satanism: The coven in The 9th Circle. They sacrifice newborn children, wear black robes, drink blood, and are watched over by the Devil himself.
- Horror Doesn't Settle for Simple Tuesday: Obviously not.
- Humanoid Abomination:
- Art is implied to be one. He displays a few traits and abilities that can't possibly be considered human, such as teleportation and Glowing Eyes of Doom.
- Satan counts as well, obviously. He's depicted as a cloaked Horned Humanoid who breathes smoke.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: Discussed, but subverted by the fact that Art is most likely not human.Tia: Do you think that clown was real?
Sarah: See? Ugh, I knew this was gonna come back to bite me. No, it's just make-believe. Demons, witches, monsters, that... That doesn't exist.
Tia: But he wasn't really a monster, if you think about it, like a vampire or a werewolf. He was just a man in a costume. Someone like that could really exist, right? Like a serial killer, I mean. - Idiot Ball:
- Many viewers have called out the costume designer for stopping when she saw the car on the side of the road, thus allowing Art to sneak into her car while she was trying to get help.
- Sarah, as well. Timmy unknowingly implies there's someone in the house with them, and while Sarah appears briefly alarmed by this, she dismisses it just as quickly and tells the kids to go to bed.
- Improbable Weapon User: Art's weapon of choice is a whip made up of scalpels, syringes, and other medical tools.
- Jerkass:
- Art, when he's not actually killing anyone, manages to be both this and Faux Affably Evil at the same time. When Casey first sees him, he annoys her by honking his horn while she's trying to read. Furthermore, he points and mimes laughing at his victims whenever he harms or scares them.
- Timmy as well, to a lesser extent. He's rude to both Sarah and Tia, repeatedly taunting the latter for being scared of Art.
- Karma Houdini: Art faces no retribution for his murders.
- Laughably Evil: Subverted with Art. Despite being a clown, he doesn't really have any comedic moments, except for the example noted under Troll below.
- Leitmotif: Creepy Circus Music for Art.
- Malevolent Masked Man: Or masked alien, in this case.
- Monster Clown: Art is an Ax-Crazy, sadistic madman (if he can even be called a "man" at all) dressed as a clown whose idea of humor involves the suffering and death of others.
- Monster Misogyny: Art mostly targets women for his murders and after capturing the costume designer, he takes the time to carve misogynistic phrases into her body while he laughs.
- Mundanger: Supernatural elements aside, the possibility of a stranger slipping a suspicious item into your child's trick-or-treat bag is definitely something parents and authority figures would have to worry about. And due to some later real events, the notion of homicidal clowns stalking your children certainly falls under this, as well.
- Nightmare Face: Just look at the cover!
- Nightmare Fetishist: Timmy, who apparently finds Art "so funny" and grins at the gory scenes in the first short.
- Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: Love or hate the movie, critics and fans alike found Art to be genuinely terrifying. The third short in the movie is even called Terrifier.
- No Name Given: Nobody in Terrifier is named, except of course, for Art.
- Off with His Head!: Art kills the children then saws off their heads on a bed for their babysitter to see.
- One-Steve Limit: There are two characters named "Sarah" in the movie, although one's name is spelled "Sara", while the main protagonist is "Sarah".
- Politically Incorrect Villain: When Art captures the girl in the Terrifier segment, he carves a number of misogynistic words into her mutilated torso.
- Poor Communication Kills: If Sarah had just taken the time to drag the kids out of the house when Timmy unknowingly informed her that someone else was in there with them, they might have lived.
- Precision F-Strike: The normally stoic Sarah belts out "Fuck!" when she tries to eject the videotape at the end.
- Sadist: Unlike most slashers, Art doesn't just kill his victims. He revels in their suffering.
- Satan: Makes an appearance at the end of The 9th Circle segment, where he rapes Casey in the Black Mass.
- Scare Chord: One plays when the woman in the third short wakes up and sees Art laughing at her.
- Self-Deprecation: Damien Leone has expressed his disappointment with the alien segment, going so far as to mock it In-Universe through Sarah!
- Shout-Out:
- Night of the Living Dead (1968) is the "monster movie" playing on TV at the beginning.
- Damien Leone has stated that Art holding the "CIRCUS" sign on the side of the road is intended to be an homage to The Hitchhiker segment of Creepshow 2.
- The jingle at the start of Terrifier is one to Halloween III: Season of the Witch.
- Silent Antagonist: Art's menace is furthered by the fact that he never says a single line of dialogue, although he is heard laughing once.
- Slasher Smile: Art has one
◊. So do some of the demons in The 9th Circle. - Tom the Dark Lord: The reality-warping, teleporting, murderous Monster Clown is known by the entirely unremarkable name of "Art".
- Troll: A rather sinister example. In his Establishing Character Moment, Art annoys Casey by honking his horn while she's trying to read. When she asks him to stop, he hands a flower to her, and she — much to the malevolent clown's amusement — is horrified when a cockroach crawls out of it.
- In one of his rare funny moments, he's later shown being kicked out of a gas station by its attendant. The reason why? He left a huge mess in the bathroom for no other reason than to fuck with him.
- Wham Line: This bit of dialogue towards the end, just before Sarah watches the third and final segment of the tape.Sarah: Timmy, knock it off. Tia, listen to me. There's nothing in your closet, not a clown, not anyone. I want the both of you to go to bed.
Timmy: Maybe we could if you'd stop checking in on us every five minutes.
Sarah: What are you talking about? - Wicked Witch: A witch coven appears in the last act of The 9th Circle, closely resembling the stereotypical wicked witch.
- Would Hurt a Child:
- Art murders Tia and Timmy.
- The coven from The 9th Circle cut the fetus out of a pregnant woman.
- You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Art is visibly annoyed when a couple of tools fall off his whip.
All Hallows' Eve 2 contains examples of:
- After the End: The setting of The Last Halloween.
- Asshole Victim: Sam's abusive father in M Is For Masochist.
- Body Horror: In Jack Attack, Jack and Elizabeth eat pumpkin seeds. This results in them both being "impregnated" by the seeds, which quickly grow into small pumpkins and burst out of their stomachs.
- Captain Ersatz: The Trickster's jumpsuit, knife, and stalking mannerisms are more than a little reminiscent to those of Michael Myers. Even his mask looks similar to the jack-o'lantern that is partially obscured by darkness on the poster art.
- Compilation Re-release: All of the segments, bar the wraparounds, are previously released short films, the oldest being “Descent,” which was made eleven years prior to this film. The shorts had their title cards and end credits snipped, with both being shown in a reel serving as the film’s end credits.
- Creepy Child: The children in The Last Halloween.
- Eldritch Abomination: Whatever it was that Isaac and his father had to appease.
- Generic Doomsday Villain: Unlike with Art, we don't get to know anything about the Trickster whatsoever. Not the remotest idea of where he came from, why he's dropping off a videotape at a woman's apartment, what his connection to the shorts on the tape is (if any), or why he's targeting this woman in particular. He's just kind of... there.
- In Name Only: Minus the name and being an anthology film set on Halloween involving a supernatural stalker and a videotape, it has no relation to the first.
- Malevolent Masked Man: Trickster wears the "face" of a Jack-o'-Lantern as a mask.
- Offing the Offspring: Isaac's father in The Offering leaves his son to die at the hands of the entity that they are sent to appease, in place of the offering that they forgot.
- Plot-Irrelevant Villain: As much as a plot exists for the wraparound segment, anyway. The Trickster doesn't have any real reason to be there, except to (apparently) drop off the tape at the nameless heroine's apartment, menace her for a little bit, and then, finally, apparently kill her.
- Psychopathic Manchild: Mr. Tricker from Mr. Tricker's Treats.
- Serial Killer: Mr. Tricker kills people and displays them in his yard as Halloween decorations.
- Things That Go "Bump" in the Night: A Boy's Life.
- Through the Eyes of Madness: In Descent, a woman sees her friend murdered in her apartment. The trauma from this causes her to hallucinate every man she comes across as her friend's killer.
