In a Crowded 2023 Horror Slate, This Film Undeservedly Got Buried

Publish date: 2024-06-18

The Big Picture

2023 was another big year for horror. If you love franchises, your appetite was filled with new entries for the Scream, Saw, Pet Sematary, and Hell House series. If you enjoy old-school slashers, those made a comeback thanks to Thanksgiving, It's a Wonderful Knife, The Blackening, and Totally Killer. Smart and subtle horror was front and center with No One Will Save You, and gore triumphed with When Evil Lurks. With so much horror coming out in one year, it was easy for some good movies, such as Cobweb, to fall through the cracks. However, one movie, more than any other, deserves to be held up and recognized for what it accomplished. If you haven't seen it, it's time you watched David Slade's Dark Harvest.

'Dark Harvest' Is Based on a Book and Directed by a Versatile Filmmaker

Before it was a film, Dark Harvest started, like many movies, as a novel. Written by Norman Partridge, Dark Harvest read like a book from a bygone era, as if it was something Ray Bradbury would write. It looked at a Midwestern town full of secrets, where every Halloween Sawtooth Jack, a supernatural boy with a flaming jack-o'-lantern for a head, is resurrected in a cornfield. He is then unleashed on the town, where every teenage boy sets out to kill him before he can make it to the local church. For the boy who catches him, he'll receive a special reward. It's an intriguing premise, and while Sawtooth Jack does kill, he is more than a simple slasher monster. The book was so beloved that Publisher's Weekly named it one of their 100 best of the year in 2006, and Norman Partridge won the prestigious Bram Stoker Award.

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With that kind of success, it meant a movie was coming sooner or later. Though it took a dozen years, in 2018 the announcement finally came that New Regency had picked up the film rights to Dark Harvest. Even better was the later news that David Slade had been tapped to direct. Slade wasn't some newcomer, but a respected veteran in the genre. He'd already made some superb movies, like 2005's Hard Candy, and 30 Days of Night in 2007, another film that came from a popular book. He was once handed the reins of a huge franchise with The Twilight Saga: Eclipse in 2010, and was just coming off making the Black Mirror film Bandersnatch in 2018. If anyone could turn Dark Harvest into a film that captured the book's tone, it was David Slade. Dark Harvest was filmed in 2021, but then MGM sat on it for two years. Announced released dates came and went until this past October, when Dark Harvest was released in just a few theaters for one night, before being dumped on the little-used MGM+ streaming service. While horror made waves through the Halloween season, Dark Harvest barely got noticed at all.

'Dark Harvest' Perfectly Recreates the Atmosphere of Halloween

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Young adult horror has made a big comeback recently thanks to Goosebumps, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, and this year's Five Nights at Freddy's. Though Dark Harvest isn't kid's fare, it is a perfect initiation into horror for a younger crowd, while also reminding an older audience of the magic that made us love horror in the first place. It perfectly captures fall and the feel of the Halloween season like few horror films have been able to do. The setting of Dark Harvest feels like a real town in the 1960s, and you can't help but be sucked into the images of jack-o'-lanterns and dark cornfields at night. Dark Harvest can be compared to another Halloween-set film that does the holiday justice, Trick 'r Treat, which was also delayed for years, and initially released to little fanfare. Horror lovers quickly found it though and turned it into a cult classic that has become a staple of the season. Trick 'r Treat's "hero" per se is a supernatural little kid thing named Sam. With a pumpkin head, and a sack covering it, Sam is at once creepy and murderous, while also sympathetic and lovable. The same goes for Dark Harvest's Sawtooth Jack, also known as the October Boy. Though he has a pumpkin head too, he is still very much his own creation.

'Dark Harvest' Introduces a New Film Monster in Sawtooth Jack

Dark Harvest could have easily just been a stereotypical slasher. Imagine a horror movie villain that's a creature with a flaming jack-o'-lantern face, innards full of Halloween candy, and a knife in his hand. You could easily just have him slaughtering teenagers left and right until a final girl takes him down and enough people would watch it. Yes, Sawtooth Jack is scary-looking, and, oh yes, he does kill people, but this isn't Michael Myers. We won't spoil it here, but Sawtooth Jack has a heartbreaking origin story with a twist, kind of like those killer animatronics in Five Nights at Freddy's. You'll want to run away from him and give him a hug at the same time. It's unfortunate that Dark Harvest didn't get much attention, for this is the rare horror movie that actually needs a sequel to further explore its antagonist.

With all of that going for it, Dark Harvest is more than a well-filmed atmosphere and cool-looking monster. None of that matters if you don't invest in the characters. Though not always fleshed out the best, Casey Likes as Richie Shepards is a sympathetic lead, a boy trying to overcome a tragic past and take down Sawtooth Jack. We have heroes and villains even among the human characters, which is crucial for a story about family tragedy, and the sins of the past. Much of the plot also resembles The Purge, with an anything-goes approach to crime on Halloween night, as catching Sawtooth Jack is all that matters.

Dark Harvest is more than it seems. It's not a perfect movie, but in a world of predictable sameness, it deserves to be commended for its effort. It's always better to swing for the fences and hit a double than just get on base by any means. If you want a Halloween movie that feels like Halloween, Dark Harvest has it. If you want a horror movie with a scary monster, Dark Harvest has it. If you want something deeper, Dark Harvest, with its message about what humanity will do to each other in the name of tradition, has it. Don't wait until next Halloween to check it out. In a world where 2023 crap like The Exorcist: Believer exists, Dark Harvest deserves your attention. Who knows, if it catches on, maybe one day we'll actually get a sequel. The last images certainly set us up for one.

Dark Harvest is available to stream on MGM+.

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