Terry and Joe reunite to discuss David Slade’s new Halloween-themed creature feature, Dark Harvest.

Spoilers follow…

JOE

It feels like we’ve been waiting forever for this title, Terry! Dark Harvest was scheduled to come out in September of 2021, but it was knocked off the schedule first by the pandemic and then from its Sept 2022 date to now. I’ve been anticipating this film for two years!

Unfortunately the repeated delays often suggests to audiences that something is wrong with the product. Is Dark Harvest a bad film that the studio doesn’t have confidence in or know what to do with? Or could it just be behind the scenes drama from the merger of MGM and Amazon Studios?

I’m happy to report that it’s likely the latter because Dark Harvest is a solid - albeit grim and undoubtedly hard to market - little film.

Based on the novel of the same name by Norman Partridge, Dark Harvest is a 1960s period flick. The action takes place in the small town of Bastion with an unusual Halloween tradition: each year all of the boys of a certain age are locked up and starved by their parents for three days before they are unleashed on the streets to hunt Sawtooth Jack, an emaciated pumpkin-headed creature. The beast must be slaughtered before the clock strikes midnight, lest the town be besieged by a dark cloud that will kill the townsfolk and destroy their crops.

I haven’t read Partridge’s source material, but I would be surprised if it didn’t feature the same opening scene: Jim Shepard (Britain Dalton)’s winning “run”, which is celebrated by the Harvester’s Guild at the midnight dance before Jim’s family is given a new house and he is sent away in a brand new red convertible.

In the year that passes, Jim’s disillusioned younger brother Richie (Casey Likes) struggles with the isolation of losing his best friend. Jim barely writes more than a vague postcard, though there is speculation from his parents Donna (Elizabeth Reaser) and Dan (Jeremy Davies), as well as Jim’s ex-girlfriend Annie (Megan Best), that he’s travelling around the US.

Not unlike an episode of The Twilight Zone, screenwriter Michael Gilio does a solid job of establishing a sense that something isn’t quite right in the town. The adults, particularly gruff Officer Jerry Ricks (Luke Kirby), are untrustworthy and the lack of certainty - about the hunt, as well as the whereabouts of the prior winners - hints at a vast conspiracy.

There’s an underlying sense that the threat posed by Sawtooth Jack isn’t even real; I spent a large portion of the film wondering if the annual ritual wasn’t simply a way to control the behaviour of the town’s hormonal young men.

There’s a ticking clock aspect to Dark Harvest because the film is primarily dedicated to the five day period leading up to the next Halloween “run.” Despite being ineligible because his family has already won, Richie ultimately decides that he wants to participate. In this capacity, the film also features a heavy class critique involving which boys deserve a chance to win the spoilers - who among them is worthy of inheriting a new home on the “good” side of town (not to mention the gender discrimination at work, since only boys - and not girls - are allowed to participate).

Dark Harvest also features a racial critique. Early in the film, Richie falls for movie theater employee Kelly Haines (E'myri Crutchfield), a black girl with as much fire and determination as him. I was surprised at how effectively the film uses the character and other racialized supporting characters, such as the Mexican boy who is flat-out told by an entitled white boy that he can’t run, to weave together criticisms of class and race.

I was really invested in Richie and Kelly’s relationship and found myself rooting for not only their escape from the regressive town, but also their ability to disrupt the society’s rigid rules and expectations. It makes this period film feel more than a little transgressive and contemporary.

There’s one final element to discuss and that’s the town’s descent into violence, which is evocative of films like The Purge series. I was particularly engrossed by the use of inky darkness (shot by cinematographer Larry Smith), which wound up amplifying the copious amount of red gore. I’ll confess, Terry, I was surprised by how violent the film is, particularly when the rabid boys turn on each other and the other townspeople!

Overall I think this is a really strong outing for Slade and I’m disappointed that MGM and Amazon didn’t have more confidence in putting this into theaters because it would have played well over Spooky Season. I sincerely hope that it finds its (cult) audience, because it would be a shame if folks slept on this twisty little film.

But I’m curious about your reaction: you’ve read the book, so I’m curious if you feel it’s a faithful adaptation? What did you think of the creature design of Sawtooth Jack? And did you like the chemistry between Richie and Kelly as the film’s star-crossed Romeo & Juliet?

TERRY

When Dark Harvest was announced in 2019 as the next feature for David Slade, I was thrilled. While I hadn’t read the slim book it’s based on, the Halloween vibes and the premise excited me to the point that I held off reading the book.

I held off for three years after Dark Harvest missed its release date two years running. When it seemed as if Slade’s film wouldn’t see the light of day, I finally listened to the audiobook version and was blown away by the poetry, Vikas Adam’s whiskey-scented narration and the dark fairy tale vibes of a period of Americana fraught with xenophobia and fears of ‘the other.’

I fell in love with the book to the point that I was almost afraid of watching the adaptation because I didn’t want to ruin my cinematic thoughts of the novel. But I am so thankful that I gave it a watch and that Dark Harvest is now seeing the light of day. It may be a few years past its original release date (held up much like another dark fairy tale favorite this year, Cobweb), but its delay isn’t an issue of quality.

The script by Grilio (who co-wrote the story and script of the criminally underseen Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves) understands the themes and the point of Norman Partridge’s 2007 novel. It’s not completely faithful to the plot, as the story is based on a slim novel, but the changes it made benefit the story and the medium. Grilio’s script focuses on the brother of last year’s Run winner, whereas the novel follows a completely different character named Pete McCormick.

This change worked perfectly by focusing on themes of otherness and family. In the novel, the protagonist feels more of a cypher–an entry point for the viewer–whereas here Richie feels like a real person and the family angle gives more thematic weight. Grilio’s script also adds a bit more of the pre-Run town to establish the setting because the novel begins on the night of the Run and expects us to keep up. In the book, Pete’s a loner; in the movie, he’s part of an iconic gang and Slade’s movie plays with 60s stereotypes of the greasers, the jocks and the preps as each tackle the Halloween Run in their own ways.

What I appreciated about Slade’s film and the production design is the way it emulates that ‘Good ol’ American Town.’ Bastion is the kind of town with those good, old-fashioned Christian values. The kind that lock their children up and drive them mad through starvation and pumping testosterone. The “Good" members of society on the outside that feed into their male teens’ toxic masculinity, building it to a rage that is unleashed upon the town of Bastion every Halloween, like a mini Purge, as you also stated, Joe. The film leans into that, too, with the masks of various political people (I spotted JFK and Fidel Castro) and focuses on the teens’ rage to the point that the Butcher Shop owner is forced to stand outside his store with a gun.

Dark Harvest is classic David Slade, complete with a color palette that seems both desaturated and larger than life. The way the fields’ pollen is captured in the light, for instance, or the way the film looks like an American fairy tale. And while the film doesn’t reach the heights of the iconic overhead shot in 30 Days of Night, the ferocity on display brings to mind the savagery of the vampires in that film.

Sidebar: I was taken aback by the violence, too. Dark Harvest doesn’t skimp on the red stuff, and seeing bodies hewn limb from limb or face from jaw highlighted the viciousness hiding just under the surface of this midwestern town.

When we get to see Sawtooth Jack, Slade has assembled quite a team to bring the creature to life, utilizing technicians who’ve worked on films like Violation and, in the case of Bryan Blair, contributed to the makeup and monsters of Alien vs. Predator, Starship Troopers and The Cabin in the Woods, among many others. And it looks like it. Mixing practical effects with visual effects, Sawtooth Jack feels like a mix of Pumpkinhead with the alien “grays” seen in pop culture. He’s emaciated, ghoulishly stuffed with candy and equal parts sympathetic and horrific.

Sawtooth Jack has a presence that a lot of modern day creature features lack, much of it thanks the effects team and the performance of actor/performance artist Dustin Ceithamer (Smiling Man in The New Mutants).

The same can be said about Casey Likes and Emyri Crutchfield’s performances as the star-crossed lovers and outcasts of the small town. Their performance grounds the narrative and adds additional heft not included in the source material.

If there’s any place this adaptation suffers, it’s with an ending that wants to be both hopeful and bleak. It’s here that the movie diverges from the novel in a disappointing (though maybe funding-happy) way. A mid credits scene doesn’t help fix the muddled ending and instead attempts to add a happy coda to what is otherwise a bleak film.

Ending aside, this is a stellar adaptation that understands the themes and the subtext behind Norman Partridge’s novel and realizes its potential in gory bursts of violence. Like the aforementioned Cobweb, Dark Harvest is a film that will have a place in my annual October watches. It’s a film that oozes autumn and Halloween, wrapped in a dark fairy tale about young men and the toxicity society places on them to fuel a cycle of violence.

Dark Harvest is out on VOD on Friday, Oct 13