Dark Harvestreleased on October 13on Apple TV+. It is based on the novel of the same title by Norman Partridge. From the beginning, the premise ofDark Harvestraises flags that it takes place in a world where things are not what they seem on the surface, likeDark CityorThe Village. It is set in 1963, in a small town with one road in or out, surrounded by corn fields to the horizon. No one is allowed to leave, except for the teen boys who win the contest on Halloween night to kill the scarecrow demon, Sawtooth Jack. Said victor receives a new car, his family gets a new house on the nice side of town, and he gets to venture out into the world – whatever world there is at the end of that road.
Where Dark Harvest Begins
The movie starts with a cold open on Halloween night in 1962. Jim Shepherd (Britain Dalton), a teen athlete wearing a letter jacket and a plastic burglar Halloween mask, and a man in a fedora with a domino mask, kill Sawtooth Jack with a baseball bat. He rips open the scarecrow’s chest, reaches inside, and seemingly pulls out the thing’s heart and eats it, but the torso is revealed to be stuffed with candy.
Jim is awarded a $25k check and a new car, and his family receives a new house. Jim, like all previous winners, is then permitted to leave the town of Bradbury. The taboo of leaving the town has programmed the teens to battle for the chance to go out into the world.
The next October, Jim’s brother, Richie (Casey Likes), is shown to be a mirror of his brother – a greaser, who wears black jeans and a dark denim jacket with the name of his gang sewn across the back: Bandits. He is a rebel, an angry youth who breaks curfew, smokes cigarettes, and is bullied at school by the athletes in the letter jackets his brother wore.
Richie is banned from participating in the contest on Halloween because his brother already won, but he is determined to go out and join the hunt with the other Bandits, and he is not alone in being banned and planning to go out on Halloween. No girls are allowed to participate, but Kelly Haines (Emyri Crutchfield), a teen who works at the local theater and whom Richie meets early in the movie, also chooses to sneak out and risk her life to win a ticket out of Bradbury.
Why Malum and The Outwaters are the Most Violent Horror Movies of 2023
The Outwaters and Malum are the most surreal, brutal, unnerving, and blood-soaked horror movies so far in 2023.
It Brings the Splatter and Practical Effects
Do not mistakeDark Harvestfor a sanitized, PG-13 horror movie. This flick is going to get to the juice quickly. There will be amputation, immolation, head ripping, and one geyser of blood. The gore is realized mostly with practical effects. This is one of the bloodiest movies of the year, along withEvil Dead Rise,Malum, andThe Outwaters.
The rules of the game are that the teen boys are locked in their rooms for three days with no food, and then they are released on the town, hungry, mad, and bloodthirsty. Given license to kill, the teens go mad with power, killing each other and business owners guarding their stores. It is a decay of civilization for one night, endorsed by the town.
What Is Sawtooth Jack?
The demon the teens are tasked to fight has a white pumpkin head and pale, gray flesh. He is played by 6’8’’ actor, Dustin Ceithamer. Sawtooth towers over the teens. His torso is lean, his limbs are long, and the head is oversized on the body. Sawtooth Jack’s makeup and body costume were created by Vincent Van Dyke’s team at VVDFX, who most recently created the makeup effects (as well as a demon that went mostly unseen) forThe Exorcist: Believer.
Sawtooth Jack’s design is similar toClive Barker’sRawhead Rexfrom the third volume of his short story collection,Books of Blood. Ignore the film version of Rex, which is drastically different from the author’s creature. Rex, as illustrated by Les Edwards inthe 1993 comic book adaptation, is supposed to have long, slender limbs and a large, reddish-orange head – both pumpkin-like and glans-like. Thus, the name, Rawhead.
What these creatures and the more iconic Pumpkinhead (who never actually had a pumpkin-head) represent is afolk horrorarchetype. They are connected to the land. They come up out of the soil. Sawtooth Jack is buried and dug up from the ground in the corn fields. Rawhead Rex is buried likewise in a field. Pumpkinhead is buried in a pumpkin patch. We see this motif of something being dug up across the genre of folk horror –Poltergeist,Pet Sematary,The Blood on Satan’s Claw, and the things buried in the dirt are the past.
Pumpkinhead: A Focus on Stan Winston’s Horror Movie
Special effects wizard Stan Winston’s directorial debut is a horror-tragedy worthy of your time. Let’s look at Pumpkinhead.
The 1963 Setting Makes Dark Harvest Stand Out
There will be no cell phones or internet search scenes (that have replaced the library scene of former decades) in this horror movie. All of the technology that has gotten in the way of horror plots is disposed of here by setting the film in the early ‘60s. It is a period that looks ideal, the businesses are art deco, the cars have curvy bodies, and the costuming, from greasers to jocks and preps, is crisp and classic, like the little town was a movie set.
It is a period remembered as a time of innocence, but we know it is flawed. Whatever illusion of innocence remained of America in October 1963 would be lost in one month with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The first victim in the movie is dressed as JFK. In 1963, America was on the edge of nuclear war with Russia, a precipice we are at again today, and a generation of young men were about to be drafted and sent to a meat grinder overseas. Vietnam looms overDark Harvestwith the longest shadow. This is an anti-war horror movie. It is about young men being lied to and drafted into a war – some swallowing the propaganda with zest, and others, terrified and seeking a place to weather the night.
Dark Harvest is the Third Halloween Movie This Year
We do not have an entry in theHalloweenfranchise this year, and who knows which way the series will go next – black-and-white remake, third entry in the Rob Zombie timeline, aFreddy vs. Jason vs. Michael, or a return to the concept of an anthology series of different stories set on Halloween. In the absence of the boogeyman, in 2023, we have had three horror movies set on All Hallow’s Eve, includingDark Harvest. Previously this month,Totally Killerwas released on streamingon Amazon Prime, and in March,Scream 6took the franchise to New Yorkon Halloween and is now streamingon Paramount+.Dark Harvestcompletes a trilogy of must-see new horror movies set on October 31 this holiday.
