Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: David Slade
Starring: Casey Likes, E'myri Crutchfield, Dustin Ceithamer, Elizabeth Reaser,
Jeremy Davies
October 31st 1963 was the night Michael Myers claimed his first victim in
the Illinois town of Haddonfield. Elsewhere in Illinois, in the town of
Bastion, the local teenage boys were battling an evil entity known as
Sawtooth Jack. What was in the air in Illinois back then?
The latter is the premise of director David Slade's adaptation of
Norman Partridge's novel Dark Harvest. The film is set in a sort of alternate greaser America, much like Walter
Hill's Streets of Fire. The greasers here don't just battle each other, but the aforementioned
Sawtooth Jack, who makes a beeline for the town's church every Halloween
night. If he gets there by the stroke of midnight the town's crops will be
doomed to fail for the following nine years. Tasked with taking him down are
the town's teenage boys, with the boy who ultimately kills Jack being
awarded a Corvette (and the ability to leave town, which is otherwise
forbidden) while his family is gifted a brand new space age home in the
classier part of town.
Richie (Casey Likes) desperately wants to be this year's winner and
town hero, but because his brother Jim (Britain Dalton) was last
year's winner, he's forbidden from taking part in the hunt, which is known
as "The Run." Despite being warned by his parents and the town's sheriff (Luke Kirby, channelling Walter Brennan for some bizarre reason), Richie joins The Run
regardless, discovering that there's more to Sawtooth Jack than the town's
leaders have admitted.
Dark Harvest was pulled from its initial cinema release of
September 2021. Okay, that was at the height of the pandemic, makes sense to
pull a movie at that time. It was subsequently pulled from its rescheduled
date of September 2022. Hmm, that doesn't sound good. And now it's been
unceremoniously dumped on Prime Video. Uh oh. If this makes you cautious
about the quality of Slade's film, you're right to be suspicious.
Dark Harvest is a disaster, so uneven and confusing that it
was clearly a troubled production.
Partridge's novel is well respected and the film certainly has a
potentially great setup, so what the hell went wrong? Most of the film's
issues come from its failure to sell its premise and build the world it
plays out in. The details of Sawtooth Jack are so blurry that it's difficult
to figure out how he's viewed by the townsfolk. In the opening we see him
bludgeoned and torn apart, with candy spilling out of his rent belly. We're
left to wonder if the boys have actually killed something living or if
Sawtooth Jack is just a pinata. We know it's the former though as we watched
him kill a young boy in the movie's prologue. Whether the movie's characters
actually know the true nature of Jack is cloudy. Are they a bloodthirsty
bunch or just out for some fun hunting down a harmless metaphor in the shape
of a scarecrow?
The details of The Run are equally blurry. At one point a group of boys
head to the corn rows where Jack emerges from each Halloween in a pickup
truck. The other boys say it's against the rules. What does this mean? Does
it mean that if they kill Jack it won't count and the town will be doomed
for nine years? Fucked if I know, and the movie doesn't seem to have any
clue either. During The Run the boys go mad and start lopping off each
other's heads, but it's unclear if this is an annual occurrence or something
has happened on this particular night to make them behave this way. If it's
the former, is it really worth it just to ensure the harvest comes in?
Slade fails to establish any kind of geography, which means it's never
clear how close Jack is getting to his ultimate goal of the church. This
completely deflates the ticking clock aspect of the narrative. Equally
nonsensical is the portrayal of our young protagonist Richie, who reacts
nonchalantly when he sees his three best friends butchered by Jack and
immediately sets about romancing his thinly drawn love interest Kelly (E'myri Crutchfield). As the only black girl in a small American town in 1963, would Kelly be
so easily persuaded to accompany Richie in breaking the law and winding up
the sheriff?
It's similarly unclear what audience Slade is aiming his film at. The Run
is presented in the fashion of The Hunger Games and Richie and
Kelly's nuance free romance is straight out of the Young Adult sphere, but
the film's over the top violence would suggest Slade is after a more mature
audience.
What Dark Harvest does have going for it is some nice
autumnal cinematography and production design. The suburban streets lined
with glowing pumpkins evoke that classic American small town Halloween
atmosphere, but the narrative playing out on those streets is a bewildering
mess. This Halloween howler is definitely more trick than treat.
