DARK HARVEST is a crazy new Halloween movie I rented for six bucks on VOD. I think they kinda fumbled in marketing it because they made me think it was about a corny looking killer in a skeleton mask, when in fact it’s about a cool monster and that’s just a guy in a Halloween costume. But I’m glad I knew nothing, because it was interesting to see the movie’s weird premise unfold and realize yeah, this is obviously based on a book (same title, written by Norman Partridge, published in 2006). Hard to make a movie with a world and concept this odd these days unless it’s based on a book.
The most succinct way I can describe it is THE OUTSIDERS meets THE PURGE + HUNGER GAMES but also PUMPKINHEAD. A gory monster movie wrapped in a novel gimmick. It takes place in an I-believe-unnamed small town surrounded by cornfields, and it opens on Halloween night, 1962. Mobs of teenage boys comb through the fields, strutting like droogs with various blunt weapons slung over their shoulders, many wearing letterman jackets, all wearing plastic masks of monsters, The Lone Ranger, etc. They’re looking for something called Sawtooth Jack (Dustin Ceithamer, THE NEW MUTANTS), and they find him, but only after he spews fire from his head and burns a kid in a JFK mask into a fuckin skeleton. (read the rest of this shit…)
This week for anyone who pledges $1 or more on Patreon I have my third Twilight review, ECLIPSE. This is the one directed by David Slade (30 DAYS OF NIGHT), who added some interesting new weirdness. I particularly had fun with this review because of some Seattle-specific details I noticed.
If you read my LADY IN THE WATER review you might remember my tangent about a thing I saw on TV called “To Catch a Predator.” Well, HARD CANDY I guess must be the big screen adaptation of that show, but it also works as a prequel to X-MEN PART 3. Ellen Page, the girl who made a bitch out of Juggernaut, does the same thing here with a guy she believes is a pedophile. But instead of “Shadowcat” she’s called “Thong-Girl” and instead of walking through walls her power is tying up a guy and threatening to cut off his balls.
