Was it released in theaters or straight to video? I was looking around for a Halloween movie and ran across this. I figured it would be a bad B (or C or D) movie with awful story, acting, special effects. Instead, it was a fun, entertaining flick.
I don't know how I missed this.
TrT has a rather convoluted release history.
It first premiered at a film festival in 2007, and then played at several more in 2008, gaining critical acclaim and fan buzz as it went along. Warner announced a wide theatrical release for October 2008. And then they decided not to.
So in 2009, Warner announced it was releasing TrT in August (the traditional dumping ground of lost movies, a sure sign that the Warner execs had no clue as to what to do with this movie). And then they decided not to.
They finally announced a DVD release of TrT in the more appropriate month of October in 2009.
So technically TrT had a theatrical release (those film festivals count as public showings) but it never had a wide theatrical release. Most of us experienced the movie first through home video.
I dont understand why they would ever consider releasing this in a month other than October. Even if it was a horrible quality movie, it would still be guaranteed to see more sales in October when people are looking for Halloween movies.
shareIt's treacherous to guess the minds of studio executives, but the reason often postulated on discussion boards at the time was that the torture-porn horror movies were in vogue around 2008-09 and studio execs didn't think TrT stood a chance against the competition, especially during October when the horror movie competition was at its peak (the Saw movies in particular dominated the Halloween season). That may be why they opted not to release it in October, but considered releasing it in August with less direct competition (and no doubt they would have followed that up with the DVD release in October).
I think it was a mistake for Warner to not give TrT a wide release at all - it may have performed poorly (and still gone on to become a cult hit on video) or it may have found its audience and did relatively well. I know I was already rather sick of the torture-porn phenomenon and was hoping for horror movie alternatives to them.
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