There have been a lot of horror movies set in the surroundings of a small town in a high school setting. Some of them have gone on to big big hits and others have died a slow death. The fact remains this is a subgenre of horror that keeps popping up from time to time. The latest horror film with a setting such as this is Dark Harvest, from director David Slade, who has directed such films as Hardy Candy and 30 Days of Night.

The town in question has a yearly ritual where the townspeople go out on Halloween to hunt “Sawtooth Jack” who comes out of the cornfields of this small Midwestern town. The high boys who are brave enough try to claim fame by taking him out until the following Halloween when it starts all over again. This becomes a very competitive ritual as many high school boys want the notoriety of the Kill.

One particular family has had a lot of luck killing the monster. A member of the Shepherd family has slain the monster the year before, Jim (Britain Dalton), and now his brother Richie (Casey Likes) wants to do the deed. The problem is a lot of boys in town and at his school don’t like him or his family and they want the claim to fame for themselves. There is also a lot of bigotry and racism in this story that takes place in the 60s when this was very prevalent. 

The movie is mostly set at night but when it’s set during the daytime the cinematography is gorgeous. At night though the film looked really dark and there wasn’t enough lighting to light the scenes. The movie just looked very shadowy and as far as horror films go this isn’t very good. Viewers need to see what’s going on clearly so they can be scared or be interested in the things going on in the movie.

As far as the cast goes this was a new crop of young actors I wasn’t familiar with before this film but a couple of character actors I was familiar with were Jeremy Davies and Elizabeth Reaser as the Shepherd parents. The cast of younger actors was serviceable in their various roles as high school kids. They were believable in these roles during this era.

David Slade is a director who has some notoriety and has made some fascinating films in the horror genre in his career. This seemed like a passion project for him from my perspective. Based on the book by Norman Partridge, Slade seemed to know his way around this material quite well. The added elements of romance, racism, and competitiveness were all nice touches in the story and film. All the aspects help make this better film than it would have been otherwise 

The long awaited Dark Harvest is finally coming out this week only a couple weeks before Halloween. It’s coming out at the right time with it being the fall season and horror season. The story seemed a bit like it has been rehashed from another story even though it’s based on a book. The director tried some interesting things with the story and the cast were okay in all their various roles. This film just didn’t blow me away like I wanted it too. It was merely an average horror film.

2 ½ stars

Dan Skip Allen