Dark Harvest (2023)

In an American small town that seems to be situated in a 50s that’s slightly off-kilter, Halloween is home to a rather different ritual than trick-or-treating. Each and every Halloween, the male late teens of the town go on a nightly “Run” to kill Sawtooth Jack, a somewhat pumpkin-headed creature, before it reaches the local church. If Jack stays unslain, an unnatural storm and nine years of bad harvest will follow. Typically, the town wins out, though not without a death toll.

The boy who takes the killing stroke is rewarded with a very American car and generally leaves town never to be seen again, while his family is rewarded with financial prosperity.

The film follows the Halloween night of Richie Shepard (Casey Likes), and a girl named Kelly Haines (Emyri Crutchfield), whose family may very well be the only people of colour in the whole place. As the brother of a former winner, Richie isn’t actually allowed to take part in the yearly night of violence, but his brother’s leaving and the town itself have put quite a chip on his shoulder, and he will go out of his way to take part any way he can, whatever his parents (Jeremy Davies and Elizabeth Reaser) may say. Kelly for her part is also excluded from proceedings, what with her being – gasp! – a girl, and a black one to boot. But like Richie, she isn’t taking this sort thing lying down, though the film often seems to forget she exists during the first acts.

During the course of a night in which their peers are as much of a threat as the monster they are hunting, the two will learn their town’s darkest secrets.

Norman Partridge’s novella “Dark Harvest” is an at least minor horror classic, an atmospheric book full of the joys of Halloween as well as an angry argument against elements of the American Dream that seem so ingrained in culture, people aren’t even going to think about them.

David Slade’s adaptation isn’t as wonderful as its source. It’s not a bad movie at all, there’s just quite a bit of it that feels slightly off: the performances are stilted and somewhat artificial in a way that reminds me of how 90s horror often went about things, but never quite stilted and artificial enough to become productively strange. The effects are fine, but also look and feel so digital they are much too cold for the story the film is trying to tell. Slade’s tendency to use jittery camera work whenever possible often feels like the wrong choice for scenes that could have used clarity and mood instead of movement; from time to time, I couldn’t help but think someone in the production liked the Purge movies a bit too much, and Patridge’s novel not enough.

The film does carry the novel’s thematic concerns. The sins of the father, the horrible price an older generation is willing to let their children pay for “prosperity” and “security” are there and accounted for, and there are scenes that suggest a nightmarish Bruce Springsteen song about a town that does everything to not let its victims/children leave. Dark Harvest is just not terribly good at exploring these themes through its action.

It’s not at all terrible, mind you, for a bit of lightly fall-themed horror, but rather a disappointingly mediocre adaptation whose changes to its source never make it any better as a movie or as an adaptation.

Nightmare Cinema (2018)

Warning: if you’re very sensitive about these things, there are spoilers ahead!

One after the other, people find themselves drawn into a cinema where a mysterious projectionist (Mickey Rourke) shows films starring themselves. Cue episodic horror shorts by different directors, until things end on a decidedly unimpressive wrap-up. But then, Rourke is as boring a horror host as you can get for this sort of thing, so any part of the film involving more of him was bound to not be terribly interesting.

We start off with “The Thing in the Woods” by Juan of the Dead director Alejandro Brugués, in which we meet a woman named Samantha (Sarah Elizabeth Walters) who is apparently in the final stages of a slasher movie, having to fight off a slasher named The Welder in semi-comical manner. But is there more going on, and are we indeed witnessing a film from a different horror movie sub-genre than our heroine thinks she’s in? This one’s a fun little beginning to the film, using an audience’s genre-savvy to clever effect, including a fun plot twist as well as oodles of pretty cool gore. Brugués directs with verve and a clear knowledge of the particular sandbox he is playing in, coming up with a segment that feels fun and over the top in all the best ways. Plus, even in the age of the post-post-(post-?)slasher movie, he does come upon about some rather great slasher jokes.

Next up is Joe Dante’s “Mirare”, based on a Richard Christian Matheson short. It concerns the misadventures of Anna (Zarah Mahler) whose doting rich fiancée pays for a bit of plastic surgery to get rid of a somewhat unsightly bit of scar tissue on one of her cheeks. The grandfatherly plastic surgeon on call convinces her that a couple other “improvements” would be nice too. Of course, there are very different ideas of beauty floating around. Just look at Mickey Rourke! Sorry?

This one’s a pretty slight story whose style and twist (if you even want to call it that) could have landed it a room in a 90s horror cable TV anthology. That doesn’t mean it isn’t a fun little thing, though, and Dante, while certainly not at his best, still has a hand for pacing, the grotesque, and sarcastic if superficial commentary on contemporary social mores.

This is followed by Ryuhei Kitamura’s “Mashit”, and if you’re now asking yourself if it will contain some of the director’s trademark slow motion sword fighting, I can answer this with a resounding yes. How does that fit into a tale about possession at a Catholic orphanage? Well, how else would you stage a sword and knife fight between a priest, a nun and a bunch of possessed children? So yeah, this segment is about as tasteful as [insert grotesque contemporary politician of your choice here], but Kitamura plays the whole thing as such a loving homage to Italian gore horror (even the music is right), I as a lover of that sub-genre myself can’t help but be charmed. Plus, before that anti-money-maker of a scene, the director also includes some moody and creepy moments like the scene where the girl children rise from their beds synchronously, so you can’t really say Kitamura is only going for shock value here. Just once he does, he really does, which I found pretty damn admirable.

The following This Way to Egress by David Slade takes a turn from the awesomely tasteless and weird into the true Weird (and into black and white footage), telling the tale of Helen (Elizabeth Reaser), who – together with her two children – has come to the office of one Dr. Salvadore (Adam Godley) with a rather peculiar problem. She, as well as the audience, sees the people in her surroundings, as well as these surroundings themselves, transforming in disturbing ways that suggest decay and wrongness. Slade does wonders in creating the atmosphere of strangeness needed here, the disturbing feeling of things around you (and Helen) changing just when you aren’t looking, of having drifted into a place where you don’t belong anymore. He is ably supported by Reaser here, who puts a naturalistic face on the reaction to the unnatural, which makes it all the more unnatural.

Alas, Nightmare Cinema does end on “Dead”, the long, tedious and unfocussed tale of Riley (Faly Rakotohavana), who is clinically dead for some minutes after being shot by the same random crazy guy who just killed his parents. Afterwards, Riley does of course see dead people, among them his mum who wants him to die for under explained reasons. But in what I can only assume must have seemed like a good idea for a plot to director/writer Mick Garris, said random crazy guy is still alive and kicking and trying to kill Riley, so there’s also a bit of badly staged suspense added to the whole “I see dead people” shtick. Frankly, like most of what Garris directs, it’s a mess - badly paced, full of details that never come together, showing little visual style and feeling like one of the really bad episodes of one of those 90s cable TV horror shows Dante’s episode reminded me of in a more positive way. Which is no wonder since that really is where Garris comes from. I don’t want to be too down on the man, though, for while I still think he’s a mediocre director at his best, I do absolutely admire his ability to get projects like this (or “Masters of Horror”) off the ground, as well as his quality as an interviewer of genre heroes.


Apart from its final segment and the wrap-around (also directed by Garris, by the way), I had quite a bit of fun with Nightmare Cinema. I’d just recommend to stop the film before the Garris segment, which should leave the prospective viewer fully satisfied with the anthology film.