PLOT: A legendary monster referred to as October Boy terrorizes residents in a small Midwestern city when he rises from the cornfields each Halloween together with his butcher knife and makes his means towards those that are courageous sufficient to confront him.
REVIEW: I at all times love a great curse story and once you add within the city sacrifice factor I’m much more on board. Darkish Harvest offers with a pumpkin monster that comes round each Halloween, that the boys from the city should kill with the intention to preserve the city alive with a bountiful harvest. These boys are from the fallacious aspect of city, so that they’re much less lucky and sometimes pressured to do it. Whichever boy kills the monster, will get an enormous prize and their household is ready up nicely in the neighborhood. The idea is fascinating and there’s a number of potential right here. Sadly, it blunders at almost each flip.
One of many main points with Darkish Harvest is that the lead character Richie doesn’t even need to take part within the run, and makes a degree of it. And he fully drops the ball when he’s confronted with adversity, proving everybody else proper. He always makes a degree of how he’s prepared for this and but he couldn’t be extra unprepared. No person appears to have a stable plan, which is unusual on condition that the prior years’ contributors have been so on the ball. It’s one thing I couldn’t assist however be aggravated with because it immediately made Richie unlikeable. His arc is just too apparent to have such a detour and I felt it simply harmed the character. He’s far too incapable and fails at almost each flip.
Emyri Crutchfield was completely phenomenal within the fourth season of Fargo and she or he’s simply the strongest solid member right here. If something, she wasn’t in it almost sufficient as her involvement is when the movie will get essentially the most fascinating. However ultimately, she additionally suffers from far an excessive amount of inaction. And I’ll at all times take pleasure in Jeremy Davies in any position he does. However everybody else is pretty forgettable. The boys all mix collectively to the purpose that I query why they even bothered giving a few of them backstories. There’s a lot gratuitous homicide on this that I began to lose rely. And whereas I at all times love me some brutal violence, one of many reveals makes little or no sense.
David Slade at all times has a visible flare together with his movies and right here isn’t any completely different. There are some genuinely stunning photographs all through this. However the dumb story selections are going to have you ever scratching your head. Perhaps I simply wanted to show my mind off extra and simply take pleasure in it for what it was, however I saved getting more and more annoyed. It at all times cracks me up when youngsters are so assured after which they instantly fail to ship. And this occurs repeatedly all through the movie. Whereas this actually echoes actual life, it will get a tad comical and clashes with the city legend facet. There have been loads of unintentionally humorous moments however my favourite was in all probability the montage of all of the youngsters being upset that they need to quick. They’re so petulant about it that it’s exhausting to not simply chuckle.
The inconsistencies with the violence have been additionally exhausting to even get a grip with. One minute there are boys too scared to even decide up a weapon, the following they’re keen to kill for some meat. And all as a result of they needed to quick? Seems like very weak reasoning. Particularly when everybody is aware of the stakes, but regardless of seeing folks straight-up murdered in entrance of them, they nonetheless don’t appear to have a second gear. Darkish Harvest is continually affected by “simply take a minute to clarify the issue” versus simply staying silent and letting the problem escalate. Nobody says something of any actual that means when they should. It’s all “helps” or silence.
And whereas a lot on this movie annoyed me, I do have to provide it some credit score for the place the story ended up. There’s an amazing factor that I received’t spoil, however it virtually made up for a number of the stupidity within the buildup. However the concern is that the finale ought to have been the complete third act. We should always have seen some comeuppance for the unhealthy folks, not simply an implication of what’s going to occur. Sadly, the inconsistencies and lack of motion from rattling close to each character within the movie, makes Darkish Harvest a really irritating watch. I got here away from this disliking each character and never seeing the purpose within the movie. And I really feel like that’s one of many worst notes to go away off on for any movie. Particularly once I really feel the premise had such potential.
DARK HARVEST IS AVAILABLE DIGITALLY ON OCTOBER 13TH, 2023.
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