‘Dark Harvest’ Movie Review: Grim Halloween Tale Looks Great But Rings Hollow
Photo from MGM
From Jeremy Kibler
Based on Norman Partridge’s 2006 Bram Stoker Award-winning novel, Dark Harvest boasts an insane premise that could be the stuff of a local Halloween legend. In a small Midwestern town circa 1963, all of the teenage boys are forced to participate in an annual run to hunt down a murderous scarecrow that rises from the cornfields on Halloween night. That scarecrow, dubbed “Sawtooth Jack,” must be caught before it gets to the town’s church, and the family of the winner who catches the creature is given a check for $25,000 and a brand new Corvette. So far, so good.
After his older brother Jim (Britain Dalton) defeated Sawtooth Jack and became last year’s winner, Richie Shepard (Casey Likes) steps up for his turn. Of course, there’s more to this ritual that has always just been expected of the town’s young men. You can just hear the hooded townsfolk from Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz chanting, “For the greater good!” But in teaming up with his crush, new girl Kelly Haines (Emyri Crutchfield), maybe Richie can destroy this pumpkinhead, ending the curse once and for all.
In a way, Dark Harvest feels like Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”—just add the Halloween setting and a pumpkin-headed monster—in terms of being about the power of tradition, no matter the sacrifice. There is an undeniably tragic undercurrent to this conspiratorial town and how beholden the townsfolk are to this annual run by becoming the bloodthirsty, one-track-minded monsters themselves, but the story has to have played more successfully on the page. It’s hard to completely invest in what’s happening when nagging questions about underwritten world-building details and rules of this “run” keep distracting. For instance, why do the parents have to lock up their boys for three days to starve them? Why is there a farmer in charge of stuffing Sawtooth Jack with candy that the boys end up devouring once they catch the walking scarecrow?
The sense of place is certainly specific, at times feeling like a parody of the ‘60s time period (even more so than last week’s Pet Sematary: Bloodlines). In trying to authenticate this heightened version of 1963, the performances tend to be wildly uneven, even misjudged, particularly with some of the younger actors playing greaser types this side of The Outsiders. Jeremy Davies and Elizabeth Reaser, both incredible actors, don’t get much time to break out of their mostly one-note boxes as Richie’s parents, either. Then there’s Luke Kirby, sucking the scenery dry in a terribly mannered turn as Officer Ricks, who might as well be wearing a sign that reads “Dirty Cop.” Casey Likes is actually solid, evoking the aforementioned greaser type as hero Richie, and Emyri Crutchfield gives the most empathetic performance as Kelly Haines, the most fully fleshed-out character and the town’s only person of color who has allegedly burned down a few local landmarks.
Dark Harvest has enough of a pedigree on both sides of the camera to not be a complete wash. It’s just unfortunate one can’t help but feel like director David Slade (who’s no stranger to the grim after Hard Candy and 30 Days of Night) and writer Michael Gilio (Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves) only scratch the surface with their archetypal characters and standard plotting. Slade certainly brings an atmospheric visual sense and a spooky Halloween flair to this ghoulish tale with special attention given to light and shadow (although the time-lapse flourishes feel too flashy and modern for a film set in the 1960s). The creature design for Sawtooth Jack is just as impressive, too, making for a physically menacing creation.
Beyond looking great and shedding some of the red stuff in a few gruesome ways, Dark Harvest might as well be full of straw.
Rating: 2/5
Dark Harvest is available on digital on October 13, 2023.
