Creeping Death (2024) Film Review – Get Trick or Treated to Death

Films often feature Halloween as one of the most popular holiday settings. And this time, it gets a unique, Gaelic twist in this supernatural slasher from American writer-director Matt Sampere. A reworking of Sampere’s earlier 2021 horror short film of the same title, serves as his full-length feature debut. It retains many ideas from the said short film but expands on the premise and mythology behind its main villain.

In this film, we follow Tim (played by Sampere himself), who is forced to spend Halloween night at home and cancel all his plans with his friends to take care of his cancer-stricken mother (Monique Parent). But it seems like he’s not going to have a peaceful night as he is paid a visit by his rambunctious, up-for-anything friends, Tramer (returning cast member from the short, Ian Brown), Isaac (K Cody Hunt), Nate (Hunter Kohl), PJ (Elise Rackemann), and Danielle (Delian Lincourt), fresh from their Halloween pranking. When one of them unwittingly breaks a sacred Halloween tradition, they all must pay the price with their lives as they are hunted down by an otherworldly entity called the Aos sí.

Penned and directed by Sampere based on a story he created with Collin Buck, this latest horror flick is admittedly fun, if you just simply go along with it. It introduces an interesting villain—the Aos sí—an Irish term for a supernatural race in Celtic mythology, similar to fairies or elves. In the film, the Aos sí breaks into the human world every Halloween night to visit the homes of families. To appease the entity and spare their lives, people leave “treats” or offerings at their doorsteps, in turn giving birth to the tradition of trick or treating. And so when Tim’s friends inadvertently steal the supposed offering for the Aos sí and bring it to his home, the entity tracks them down to harvest their souls instead. An occasionally thrilling cat-and-mouse chase follows between the group and the entity.

The film takes a while to get to its “meatier” parts and finally have a glimpse of the film’s villain, with the majority of the film’s first hour focusing on introducing its major players. The film’s characters, while mostly cardboard cutouts are still pretty effective, particularly Hunter Kohl’s Nate. His character is probably the strongest aspect of this film, for better or worse, as he shows how far people would go to save themselves once faced with death. He poses a moral dilemma to the group and to the audience of whether one will be willing to sacrifice another life for the sake of others, begging the question: Who’s the real monster? It also helps that Kohl’s performance as the group’s designated jerk is annoyingly darn good. Sampere is also pretty effective as the film’s lead, Tim, although he still leaves much to be desired when it comes to his more dramatic scenes with his mother. Delian Lincourt and Elise Rackemann are also standouts as Danielle, whom Tim secretly likes, and PJ, Isaac’s girlfriend.

While admittedly a bit rough around the edges, Sampere did an incredible job delivering some effective scares on occation. The kills are pretty bloody too, although there are only a few of them. There’s also one death scene in the third act which could have been executed better, once we finally realized what this entity is truly capable of. It’s got some nice special/visual effects thanks to Oliver Poser and Jesse Conti and also features a pretty creepy creature design by Mark Kosobucki.

What I didn’t like though is when the film’s main villain breaks his MO and kills a random guy who was not involved in breaking the Aos Si’s tradition. It seemed like the guy was butchered to simply add to the body count, which isn’t plenty enough. At least, the film provides a surprisingly satisfying payoff that opens doors for a sequel.

While far from perfect, this decently made supernatural holiday slasher from Matt Sampere is a strong feature debut that works as a nice calling card for the writer/director that is sure to stick with audiences.