Trick (2019)

Trick is a 2019 American slasher film directed by Patrick Lussier and starring Jamie Kennedy and Omar Epps.

Plot
In 2015 in Benton, New York, high school senior Patrick "Trick" Weaver is playing spin the bottle at a Halloween party using a knife with "TRICK" and "TREAT" carved into opposite sides of the handle when it lands on another boy. The other players tease Trick, telling him to kiss the other boy. Trick grabs the knife and stabs a teenager named Evan in the chest, stabbing another teenager in the side of the neck, slashing Dan's throat, stabbing Tammy twice in the chest and stabbing Parker in the throat. Dan bleeds to death from the slit throat and Trick is stabbed in the side with a fire poker. At the hospital, Det. Mike Denver wishes to remove the Halloween face paint hiding Trick's face but Trick flips the hospital bed uses his opened handcuffs to rip open a cop's throat.

Det. Denver and Sheriff Jayne find the body of a hospital worker who has been stabbed in the face, indicating Trick is now in disguise. Trick takes a surgical saw and uses it to slash another workers throat and stab another in the side. Det. Denver and Sheriff Lisa Jayne shoot Trick several times and he falls out of a window onto the road below but then disappears into the river. During police interviews, Troy states that he stabbed Trick with the poker but the students provide contradictory descriptions of Trick's appearance. No one has ever met Trick's parents, Trick's registered address turns out to be a dockyard, and the two-faced pumpkin mask that Trick was wearing at the party disappears from evidence.

In 2016, at a high school Halloween dance in Riverton, New York, two students encounter Trick, thinking he is in costume. Trick stabs one of them in the chest, neck and then slits his throat, before killing the other by stabbing her multiple times in the back. Trick slashes the back of the principal's head open, before heading into the gym and stabbing nine other teenagers. In 2017, five bodies are found at a Halloween party in Hudson Village, New York with their throats slashed.

On October 30, 2018, Det. Denver warns two agents in Shady Creek, Sam Swift and Tina Mendez, that Trick could attack there because they are located along the same river where all of his attacks have occurred. They dismiss his concerns and Sam goes to the bathroom, before being ambushed by Trick. Tin and Denver find him outside with a metal rope around his neck, weighed down by a pile of bricks. Trick violently kills him by pulling down the bricks, causing the rope to slice around his neck and decapitate him. While Denver is distracted, Trick stabs Tina four times and kills her.

On October 30, 2019, Trick leaves the message "DENVER" in blood at a murder site in Benton, where the victim had their eyes stabbed out. The next day a masked Trick surprises the now unemployed Denver outside his car and is chased through the cemetery before disappearing. Trick fakes text messages from Denver to lure Deputy Green to the old crane barge, where he uses a sailing blade booby trap to stab her in the chest, before brutally murdering her by using a crane to swing a gravestone through the windshield where she is sitting, impaling her through the face and pulverizing her head. Sheriff Jayne notes that the gravestone belongs to Agent Christina Mendez. Trick stabs a clown in Talbott's haunted maze. Cheryl, a survivor of the original killings in 2015, sees Trick wielding the carved knife when he stabs a person in the top of the head in front of her.

Trick kills Mr. Talbott by stabbing him in the chest and neck. Trick stabs Nicki so Det. Denver sends her to the hospital and Cheryl accompanies her, where Cheryl finds that Trick has killed her hospitalized father by slicing open his chest and pulling his organs out. Troy confesses to Det. Denver that Cheryl was the one who stabbed Trick with the fire poker, so Det. Denver and Sheriff Jayne rush to the hospital and find Cheryl held captive by Trick. Trick stabs Det. Denver and Sheriff Jayne multiple times before Cheryl shoots him. When Trick seems unaffected, Det. Denver jumps with Trick out the window onto a car, killing Trick.

Multiple individuals wearing Trick's face paint arrive and Det. Denver realizes that a group of devotees have been carrying out the bidding of the real Patrick Weaver, who arrives in a wheelchair. The devotees include a bartender at the bar where Tina and Sam died, and another copycat. Deputy Wan and Slater arrive, but Slater shoots Wan in the throat and joins the others in stabbing Det. Denver to death. Cheryl arrives and notices the scar on the stomach of a nearby man in a wheelchair, whom she pursues back into the hospital. She sees him discard a pumpkin mask into the garbage and begin deleting the hospital's video surveillance footage. Patrick lets her into the room, where they struggle before she uses her self-defense training to use the knife against him and stab him in the stomach. Patrick dies after wheezing out his final words "one of us". Deputy Slater tells Sheriff Jayne that Det. Denver was stabbed to death but Sheriff Jayne notices some face paint remaining on his cheek. Slater attacks her but Cheryl uses the carved knife to stab him. Sheriff Jayne takes the knife from her and stabs him again. The remaining devotees of Trick travel onward to recruit more followers while Cheryl, Sheriff Jayne, and Det. Denver continue to track and pursue them.

Cast

 * Jamie Kennedy as Dr. Steven
 * Omar Epps as Det. Mike Denver
 * Tom Atkins as Talbott
 * Alex Breaux as Len
 * Ellen Adair as Lisa Jayne, Sheriff of Benton County
 * Vanessa Aspillaga as Agent Tina Mendez
 * Kristina Reyes as Cheryl Winston
 * Thom Niemann as Patrick Weaver
 * Todd Farmer as Deputy Wan
 * Gary J. Tunnicliffe as Principal
 * Aaron Dalla Villa as Smooth Johnny
 * Dani Shay as Deputy Green
 * Summer Crockett Moore as Patricia Denver
 * Hillary Greer as Nurse Helen
 * Jerome Charvet as Deputy Slater
 * Melody Hu as Janice
 * Sasha Diamond as Deputy Iris Reddick
 * Robert G. McKay as Agent Swift
 * Adrienne Rose Bengtsson as Brooke
 * Allen Wall as Short Scared Ghost
 * Kya Brickhouse as Nicki
 * Max Miller as Troy
 * Raith Kell as Thomas the Orderly
 * Kevin A. Wall as Diner Client
 * Tony Mitchell as Chief Gunn
 * Robert M. Jimenez as Cheryl's Dad
 * Ana-Maria Corizo as Cheryl's Mother
 * Austin Ferris as Student

Production
Originally Dermot Mulroney was cast to play Det. Mike Denver but Omar Epps ended up playing the role in the film. Filming took place in Middletown, Beacon, and Warwick, New York, as well as the Umbra Sound Stages in Newburgh, New York.

Release
The film was released in the United States on October 18, 2019.

Reception
Trick has a 36% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 28 reviews, with an average rating of 4.2/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Fast-paced savagery and a memorable twist aren't enough to make up for Trick 's slavish devotion to superior slasher films of the past." Frank Scheck of The Hollywood Reporter called Trick "a slasher film with a dull edge" and wrote that "the film goes down an extremely predictable path, mainly buying time between killing sprees". Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com gave the film 1½, calling it "more incoherent than terrifying". Meagan Navarro of Bloody Disgusting wrote that "it’s clear that Lussier and Farmer are operating at a sub-standard level" and that "at every level, from technical to story, Trick is a joyless affair."

The film earned $48,953 at the global box office.