The director of 30 Days of Night is bringing American horror writer Norman Pentridge’s cult 2006 novel to the screen. It feels like Christmas! Except, of course, it’s Halloween.
How to watch Dark Harvest in New Zealand
Dark Harvest arrived on Amazon Prime Video on October 13 – a Friday, appropriately enough.
What is Dark Harvest about?
We set our scene in the small town of Bradbury (what an interesting name…) where, every year at Halloween, the cornfields are stalked by a spectral figure known as Sawtooth Jack. The young men of the town are tasked with stopping him from reaching the church. If he does, the crops will fail and the town will be doomed.
For his part, ol’ Jack is more than happy to bloodily dispatch anyone who gets in his way. However, the boy who stops him is allowed to leave Bradbury forever – everyone else is stuck there, re-enacting the ritual every year. Pumpkinhead meets Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery, in essence.
The cast of Dark Harvest
Newcomers Casey Likes and E’myri Crutchfield are our teen leads, with Elizabeth Reaser, Jeremy Davies, Luke Kirby, Britain Dalton, and Steven McCarthy in support. Somewhere under about 30 kilos of prosthetics is Dustin Ceithamer as Sawtooth Jack.
Dark Harvest trailer
What are the critics saying about Dark Harvest ?
Horror critics are digging it, praising the film’s spooky atmosphere and brutal violence, while more serious-minded commentators are pooh-poohing the film’s literary pretentions and the general silliness of the conceit – which strikes us as rejecting the premise, but what can you do?
At a rough guess, you’ll like it if this is the sort of thing you like. As an aside, author Norman Pentridge wrote The Crow: Wicked Prayer back in 2000, which was filmed in 2005 as the fourth and, to date, final movie in every goth’s favourite franchise, with Edward Furlong under the clown make up. But don’t hold that against him.
