Today, I’d like to talk about a Halloween themed horror film that I recently discovered and was pleasantly surprised by: A 2019 Canadian film called Halloween Party.
I first became aware of this movie while scrolling through Tubi one afternoon looking for something else, and immediately declared it a must-watch. You can view the trailer here.
Now, these random streaming-service spooky finds can be very hit-or-miss. There are quite a few that I’ve turned off before ever finishing them, so I tend to go in with low expectations. But, while I don’t find Halloween Party to be Oscar-worthy or anything like that, I personally found it to be a very interesting, smart horror film.
Our story opens with best friends Grace and Zoe, hanging out in Zoe’s dorm room. Grace is scrolling through pictures on Zoe’s computer when suddenly a very primitive Halloween animation pops up, declaring itself “A Halloween Party For GRACE” and prompting her to type her worst fear in a little box while a counter inside a little pumpkin graphic counts down. She tries typing a few random things, then eventually types “vagina spiders” and a screen appears telling her she’s been “SAVED!” Grace yells to Zoe that she thinks the computer has a virus or something, but Zoe replies that it’s just a meme, and says there’s an image of a witch that pops up if you let the counter run out, kind of like those famous “screamer” things of the mid-2000s. Grace is baffled as to how it knew her name on a computer that wasn’t her own, but soon the meme appears on Zoe’s phone, and, wanting to show Grace the witch, she lets the timer run out. The girls laugh and agree it’s a stupid, not at all scary meme, and go their separate ways for the night.
Zoe is working an overnight shift, doing inventory at a clothing store in the mall, when suddenly she starts receiving strange texts. Some typical horror-movie jump scares happen, and she ends up being killed by what resembles a pig person, which was precisely the fear she had typed into the meme’s box before deciding to just let the counter run out so that Grace could see the witch.
When Grace finds out about the pig person, seeing an image tweeted by some reporter, she gets freaked out, remembering the meme and the story of Zoe’s true worst fear. The police, of course, don’t want to hear about some spooky meme, so Grace goes to talk to the star of the university’s computer sciences program, a guy named Spencer.
Spencer is instantly shocked at how untraceable the meme seems to be, and asks to look at Zoe’s computer. He and Grace go back to Zoe’s room and try to figure out what’s going on, when suddenly, a guy named Darren who lives in the same building walks in, and the computer screen lights up, declaring “A Halloween Party For DARREN”. Grace is now even more freaked out that it suddenly knew someone else was in the room, and not even the person who was using the computer, and she and Spencer convince Darren that he has to type. Darren is unsure what to say at first, then finally settles on The Exorcist, saying that that movie fucked him up for life. However, the witch still pops up, leaving Grace relieved that the meme has to be fake, if it didn’t believe Darren’s worst fear, until Spencer later tells her that he and Darren grew up together and his worst fear was most definitely not The Exorcist, but a man that used to watch all the neighborhood kids at the playground and once tried to actually kidnap Darren.
Sure enough, that afternoon, Darren starts seeing images of “The Tall Man” all around him, and is eventually found dead at the very same playground he was nearly abducted from all those years ago.
As Spencer and Grace investigate further, they realize that the meme is somehow triggered by something in the closet in Zoe’s room, a space on the floor that has been weirdly bricked up. The meme activates when the spot on the floor is disturbed, and it chooses the name of whoever is closest to an electronic device, forwarding itself to a random contact if the “SAVED!” screen is achieved.
I’m going to discuss some spoilers here, so if you plan to watch the movie and don’t want to know what the Halloween meme actually is, please scroll past until you see ****END SPOILERS****.
****SPOILER ALERT****
After some research, Grace and Spencer discover that their university was initially a hospital, and the building that Zoe lived in once housed the terminally ill, with her specific room coinciding with the last of the “Balloon Babies”, severely disfigured children that were affected by a chemical spill in the 80s. The Balloon Babies often wore masks and other types of costumes to conceal their disfigurement, leading to them being referred to as “The Halloween Party” by “normal” people who knew them. As they aged, the children became violent and hateful, eventually wanting to hurt everyone that they believed had any sort of hand in their pain. One of their old doctors reveals that the oldest five started a computer club before eventually committing suicide, confirming that they are responsible for the Halloween meme and what’s happening to the people who see the witch.
Grace demands that Spencer erase the meme from existence, which he seems to do, but when his computer science colleagues get ahold of his computer, they recover it and try it out for themselves. It ends up forwarding to a guy named Garrett, from the same fraternity as Darren, and when Spencer goes to warn him, the other frat boys hold Spencer back after Garrett is saved and the meme forwards to Spencer, believing that Spencer sent the meme to Garrett as a cruel prank to make him admit his fear of his alcoholic mother. When the timer runs out and Spencer gets the witch, he warns the other boys that now everyone is in trouble, because his worst fear is the Halloween Party.
Sure enough, the Halloween Party kids return. Some of the visual effects used on these characters leaves something to be desired, but the story is done so well that it’s forgivable. Sadly, Spencer becomes a casualty of the Halloween Party, but Grace survives, thinking the key is to free the kids by breaking the brick enclosure in Zoe’s closet. When she returns to their former doctor to tell her what she’s done, the doctor freaks out, saying the brick enclosure was put there to keep them from being able to get out into the world. Grace decides there’s nothing else to do but run off to Thailand and save herself, but then the Halloween meme starts appearing on the screens inside her plane. Powerless to stop it, Grace watches as fears begin to come to life, as the witch has appeared on every screen. Freeing the Halloween Party only made their hacking skills stronger.
****END SPOILERS****
I’ve often said I’d love to see what a modernized version of Halloween III: Season of the Witch would look like, and I have to say, this movie could almost very well be that. While it has some of the typical horror film fare, Halloween Party does things I haven’t really seen done before, or at least often. It’s a very interesting concept, and is never really predictable. As I said in the spoiler portion of my review, some of the visual effects could be a little better, but the story is so engaging that it’s definitely forgivable. The movie is also not over-the-top gory, so it’s watchable even for those that aren’t into that sort of thing. Most of the violence/kills are largely off-screen, though there are some jump scares and some overall imagery that some people might find disturbing.
All in all, my only real complaint about this movie is that it didn’t exactly deliver on Halloween atmosphere in the way that I’d hoped, but it was a much more engaging story than I ever would’ve guessed it would be. If you have about an hour and a half to spare, give Halloween Party a watch. You will, most likely, be glad you did.
Stay spooky, my friends.
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