"Dark Harvest" has the mood and blood of a grim Halloween tale but not much else

Dark Harvest (2023)

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 pumpkinheaded 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. Read the full review at GuyAtTheMovies.com

Grade: C

MGM released "Dark Harvest" (93 min.) on digital on October 13, 2023.