Dark Harvest (2023)

In an American small town that seems to be situated in a 50s that’s slightly off-kilter, Halloween is home to a rather different ritual than trick-or-treating. Each and every Halloween, the male late teens of the town go on a nightly “Run” to kill Sawtooth Jack, a somewhat pumpkin-headed creature, before it reaches the local church. If Jack stays unslain, an unnatural storm and nine years of bad harvest will follow. Typically, the town wins out, though not without a death toll.

The boy who takes the killing stroke is rewarded with a very American car and generally leaves town never to be seen again, while his family is rewarded with financial prosperity.

The film follows the Halloween night of Richie Shepard (Casey Likes), and a girl named Kelly Haines (Emyri Crutchfield), whose family may very well be the only people of colour in the whole place. As the brother of a former winner, Richie isn’t actually allowed to take part in the yearly night of violence, but his brother’s leaving and the town itself have put quite a chip on his shoulder, and he will go out of his way to take part any way he can, whatever his parents (Jeremy Davies and Elizabeth Reaser) may say. Kelly for her part is also excluded from proceedings, what with her being – gasp! – a girl, and a black one to boot. But like Richie, she isn’t taking this sort thing lying down, though the film often seems to forget she exists during the first acts.

During the course of a night in which their peers are as much of a threat as the monster they are hunting, the two will learn their town’s darkest secrets.

Norman Partridge’s novella “Dark Harvest” is an at least minor horror classic, an atmospheric book full of the joys of Halloween as well as an angry argument against elements of the American Dream that seem so ingrained in culture, people aren’t even going to think about them.

David Slade’s adaptation isn’t as wonderful as its source. It’s not a bad movie at all, there’s just quite a bit of it that feels slightly off: the performances are stilted and somewhat artificial in a way that reminds me of how 90s horror often went about things, but never quite stilted and artificial enough to become productively strange. The effects are fine, but also look and feel so digital they are much too cold for the story the film is trying to tell. Slade’s tendency to use jittery camera work whenever possible often feels like the wrong choice for scenes that could have used clarity and mood instead of movement; from time to time, I couldn’t help but think someone in the production liked the Purge movies a bit too much, and Patridge’s novel not enough.

The film does carry the novel’s thematic concerns. The sins of the father, the horrible price an older generation is willing to let their children pay for “prosperity” and “security” are there and accounted for, and there are scenes that suggest a nightmarish Bruce Springsteen song about a town that does everything to not let its victims/children leave. Dark Harvest is just not terribly good at exploring these themes through its action.

It’s not at all terrible, mind you, for a bit of lightly fall-themed horror, but rather a disappointingly mediocre adaptation whose changes to its source never make it any better as a movie or as an adaptation.