Director David Slade’s new Halloween horror movie, Dark Harvest (MGM Studios) has moments of visual verve and a cool pumpkin-headed demon ready to wreak havoc, but a confusing back story undercuts the story’s fright factor. That’s too bad because this home rental release, set in the 1960s, looks great and has a trio of gifted veteran actors in lead roles. They’re probably here less for the script than to work with the director of the underappreciated, but truly scary vampire film, 30 Days of Night, as well as Twilight: Eclipse.
Based on an acclaimed 2006 short novel by Norman Partridge, adapted by screenwriter Michael Gilio (Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves), Dark Harvest opens on a Midwest farm town in 1963. It’s a place where the corn crows high, the boys dress like they’re auditioning for Grease and where Kelly (a winning E’myri Crutchfield), the only African American student in the high school, doesn’t dare dream of being asked to the town dance. All decisions are made by the Harvester’s Guild, the sponsors, each Halloween, of “the Run,” which finds the town’s teenage boys going a bit berserk in their attempt to hunt down and kill Sawtooth Jack (Dustin Ceithamer), a creature that rises out of the corn field each year to slaughter all it sees.
He who kills Sawtooth Jack becomes a hero and instant town legend. His parents are rewarded with a house in the nice part of town plus cash while the winning teen gets a Corvette and best of all, the chance to leave town for good, an option unavailable to everyone else. Gilio’s screenplay sidesteps details of why the townspeople can’t leave, or how they’re kept there, much less what exactly the town gets from killing said demon. A good crop, a la Children of the Corn? Dark Harvest is a film so riddled with anemic plotting (reportedly in keeping with the novel) that frustrated movie goers may give up in the first act, which has the added problem of being a bit light on action.
Be…
Read the full article here
