NOW ON VOD! Director Chad Ostrom’s The Day After Halloween is a horror comedy indie romp with plenty of surprises. Addison (Danny Schluck) and Hayes (Brandon Delany) are buddies who live on the property of a vintage drive-in theater (shot in the wonderful old Mahoning Drive-in in Leighton, PA). Coincidental with Halloween, the theater is closing for the season, so they throw a huge, drunken bash for friends and family at the Drive-In. So much booze is consumed that memories are lost in blackouts, and on the day after Halloween, the boys wake up desperately hungover to find a corpse in the bathtub, having no idea how it got there.
Written by Danny Schluck, The Day After Halloween bounces around wildly on the timeline leading up to the party, with a helpful on-screen clock to inform the viewer when the events depicted are occurring relative to midnight on Halloween. As the story winds a torturous path to the finale, the third act pulls in some unexpected horror arcana, and things get really weird.
Addison is an unreconstructed troglodyte example of the male species, with Hayes also needing sensitivity training, but to a lesser degree. Addison is a racist, homophobe, and misogynist, not necessarily in that order. His crude approach to women and everything else is played for laughs. He’s also a horrible slob who dresses like he’s homeless and drinks like it’s his job. Some of that is funny, and some are just cringe-inducing.
“…the boys wake up desperately hungover to find a corpse in the bathtub…”
If this were Clerks, Addison would be Randall, and Hayes would be Dante, but with clumsier dialogue. These characters miss the mark of being lovable deadbeats: they are too old and too repugnant, but that is likely intentional. If you like Addison and Hayes, maybe that says more about you than it does them. Despite the characters being brash and unlikeable, we still want to know what happened to them last night and what will happen going forward as the tale unfolds. One thing is for sure: The old saw about horror movie characters who have sex getting taken out in particularly vicious ways holds true here, plus some.
The ladies in the film gamely soldier on around the antics of their male loser acquaintances. Hayes’ sometimes-girlfriend is played by Aimee Fogelman, and a party guest in a vampire costume is played by Victoria Meade. Both actresses struggle to do their best with the limited roles but turn in good performances nonetheless.
For an ultra-low-budget Indie horror comedy, The Day After Halloween provides a good share of laughs and jolts. There’s enough bloodshed to appeal to the gore-porn junkies and enough raw transgressive humor to get a horrified giggle from the viewer. Ostrom knows what he’s doing here and who his audience is. By design, it would probably be best to be chemically altered when viewing this. If you enjoy Troma-style Llloyd Kaufman-esque schlock, then this is your kind of joint.
The Day After Halloween is available on Video On Demand platforms.
"…if you enjoy Troma-style Llloyd Kaufman-esque schlock, then this is your kind of joint."
