Sarah is babysitting young Timmy and pre-teen Tia on Halloween night, what could possibly go wrong. While checking his candy haul for the evening Timmy discovers someone has slipped an old unlabelled tape into his bag. Naturally the tap goes on and we get one hell of a short movie, not the sort of thing that is age group appropriate as the matriarchal Sarah decides. She sends the kids to bed then for no apparent reason decides to watch the rest of the tape. She gets two additional stories before things start to go freaky deaky around the house, and well she is getting a Halloween to remember … in your worst nightmares!

Seems I am not batting a thousand in 2025 with the third dud in a row landing on my screen. To be honest I only hooked into this one as we have the third movie in the Terrifier franchise currently in cinema, Jesus they really do want to lose money in this industry, and figured I should check out Art the Clown as he seems to be flavour of the month. Hopefully the subsequent movies are better, as this one is gorenography simply aimed at the lowest commend denominator who let’s face facts really don’t get what horror can do or the power for subversion it can conjure up. Long story short, I was not impressed, thought the movie was amateur hour at best, and now really wished I had checked something else out. Let’s break it down and check out what the movie delivers.

The structure of the movie should by now be well known to the horror community, we get a framing story and three independent stories. Timmy’s video tape is slipped into the player and we are away and running with the first story, The Ninth Circle. Not a great starting short, it’s disjointed, there’s clearly a number of separate ideas being shoehorned into the short, and to be honest I was already bored as the gore started to flow. Hey if an unborn baby being cut out of its mother is your thing, then dig right in.

Our second short movie is Something in the Dark which focuses in on the alien abduction theme, without getting to the anal probe unfortunately. Caroline is unpacking at a new house when she is traumatised by an alien home invader, who eventually drags her off to a fate unknown. And Caroline was doing a good job hiding, until given away by her mobile phone ringing. Gee never seen that before, oh wait it’s a horror trope, never mind. What could have been a pretty cool short is spoilt to a great degree by a shockingly bad creature design that is more likely to have audience members banging their heads on their desks than being chilled to the bone. Still it was at least coherent, which is a hell of a lot more than the first short was.

Rounding out we get the slasher Terrifier, which features Art the Clown as the main protagonist and body count creator. Actually Art is a central motif through the entire movie but here takes a more active role. Guess the attempt was at a throwback to 1980s style slashers, but to be honest director/writer Damien Leone wouldn’t know how a classic slasher works if it was tattooed onto his arse. The short is simply a chance to show a great deal of gore and body parts without having anything to really say. Audience members should feel degraded if they watch this absolute travesty of a short. Things are not helped by some shoddy special effects and once again simply a rehash of previous outings, both in film and print. There is nothing unique to see here, though the final shot is going to stay with the viewer.

Guess the overriding feeling with All Hallows’ Eve is we are dealing with a disjointed narrative, shoddy special effects, an overall feeling of grotty cheapness – there is no art involved here, which is ironic given the clown’s name, and the deep impression that we are just looking at exploitation at its worse rather than an attempt to create something that will be praised in even a year’s time. I could find nothing of merit in this movie, but let’s see what the Director can do next, this after all is his first effort, it can only get better right? 

There are however aspects to the movie which are pretty solid, and save the overall project from being even worse than it is. The VHS effects are excellent, we are talking tape stretch, poor recording, tape wear etc. For anyone who grew up in the age of the old tape format, the effects are immediately recognisable and weren’t we glad when superior technology arrived in the form of DVD.

Art the Clown is a pretty good antagonist, the clown design is superb and as regular readers of the site are aware we believe Clowns are inherently Scevil, (Scary combined with Evil). Would have liked a bit more humour, wouldn’t that once again be a requirement from a clown, to balance out the share evil that Art represents. Cruel, sadistic, and with no redeeming features comes to mind. Guess in a full length movie Art might breath a bit more, we’ll see when we get to further movies in the franchise.

I’m sorry to say this, but there is a fair amount of misogyny in the movie, male victims are finished off quickly, notably off screen with the grisly remains then on show for the viewer – that could be viewed as sick Bro if you enjoy this sort of shite, while the death of the gals is focused on with the camera going full voyeur on the carnage. While we don’t normally worry about this sort of thing, it means it is really notable for this review to highlight the situation.

Well I’m happy to say I didn’t have to pay for the movie, was on one of the streaming services, as it is pretty much a forgettable outing. The movie is poorly made, wallows in gorenography, with acting very uneven. I would say if it wasn’t for streaming this movie would have already sunk without trace, but hey they need to fill those slots with anything they can get. No recommendation to anyone on this one, the movie has no redeeming qualities and is simply trash cinema. Anyone claiming All Hallows’ Eve has any cinematic qualities is either simping or has no critical facilities at all. Clearly someone liked the anthology as it has become a franchise, with the latest outing failing at the box office last year. Complete waste of celluloid, avoid like the plague.