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…)
LITTLE WOODS is the debut of writer/director Nia DaCosta, who followed it with the upcoming 
Samuel L. Jackson, these days maybe he doesn’t get the greatest roles. I mean it’s cool that David Hasselhoff handpicked him as his replacement when he passed on Dr. Fury or whatever in the Marvel Comics Books movies, but that’s a supporting player. You don’t see him carrying too many movies anymore. That’s why I had some hopes for this lower budget crime picture produced by IFC and given a very limited theatrical release, probly less screens than he has lines in THE AVENGERS.
