horror

Friends… I have been on a bit of an adventure. The other day I saw some commentary from a friend talking about the movie Dark Harvest that came out earlier this month. The poster for it seems rather compelling and being a huge fan of Children of the Corn it piqued my interest. This was released as a rental on streaming platforms and got a live screening at the Alamo Drafthouse. So in another place and another time this likely would have been a major theatrical release, but in the weird place we are in at the moment it went “directly to home video”.

Then I read the fateful words on the poster… that it was “Adapted from The Award-Winning Novel”. 2023 has been the year of the book for me, and I am currently reading my fortieth of the year. Given how drastic movie adaptations can veer from the original material, I figured I would take a pause in my reading of Agency by William Gibson and give this novel a try. In the worst-case scenario, I bounce hard and simply watch the movie like I was going to originally.

This was a bit easier said than done because apparently, Dark Harvest has been a VERY popular name for novels. Some further research led me to the fact that the first one in this sequence is the one I was looking for by Norman Partridge. The “Award Winning” in the movie tagline relates to the Bram Stoker Award for Best Long Fiction from the year 2006. So yesterday morning I popped over to the Libby App and luckily one of the three libraries that I have a card for had it available. The novel itself is really more of a novella given that it is only 176 pages in length and I was able to easily read it over my lunch break.

Dark Harvest tells a tale that isn’t necessarily unique, but it does so in a really visceral manner from the perspective of an omniscient narrator that you learn more about as the tale comes to its conclusion. It is a tale of a suffocating small town, with bitter meanspirited people, and a yearly ritual that holds a dark secret. It is a novel that contains a “twist” but one that is pretty easily guessed and outright explained well before you have reached the halfway point. It is a novel with a deep sympathy for the monster, more in the vein of Frankenstein than Pumpkinhead. The town and more specifically the Police Officer stand in opposition against our trio of anti-heroes as we the readers root for them to succeed. Things may not be tied up in the neatest of bows at the end… but it was still fairly satisfying. More than anything this is a novel that rebels against the “things have always been this way and have to stay that way” narrative of small-town America. As a product of deeply rural “one horse town” America, I at least found it satisfying and immediately identified with the narrative of wanting to leave at any cost. That is precisely what I did… once I was gone, I was gone and I didn’t even come home on the weekends.

The movie however does what Hollywood always seems to do… and mercilessly fucks with the story. By the time we are ten minutes into the tale, it is already barely recognizable from the source material. While the novel is a tale of rebelling against dark traditions… the movie leans significantly more into the monster movie genre. As a result, you end up with this sort of what if Lord of the Flies happened during the Purge where the kids who all look like Back to the Future 1950s extras go out and wage war against Pumpkinhead. The only pieces that remain from the Novel, are the most basic building blocks of the plot… the October Boy, Starved Children Pressed into Service to Defend the Town, and the townsfolk enabling or at least turning a blind eye to the whole process.

I am not saying Dark Harvest is a bad film, just that it has very little to do with the novella that spawned it. It seems to constantly be flipping back and forth on this border of taking itself way too seriously, and cartoonish levels of nonsensical violence. For example, I give you the “bloodsplosion” which is a truly nonsensical scene where apparently the monster brutally murders an entire cellar worth of kids who have tried to hide away from “The Run”. Nothing that the monster could have done… would have caused this giant fountain of blood to come crashing out of the cellar, but we have it nonetheless as a weird hamfisted callback to the elevator scene from The Shining maybe? There is zero sympathy for the devil here… as Sawtooth Jack is just a mindless abomination that must be killed. There is some attempt to pin a message on at the end… but the delivery just does not really work with anywhere near the same gravity as it does in the novel.

I am not saying it is a bad film. So long as you go into it with the knowledge that it is going to be a movie with an easily guessable twist that makes some oftentimes interesting stylistic choices… you will probably enjoy yourself. That said after watching it… I fully understand why this went “directly to home video”. I think the biggest sin that the movie does, is doing a poor job of representing the novel. That however often seems to be the case, especially with horror adaptations. It isn’t that the novel itself is the best thing I have ever read, but it is good enough that I would suggest it, especially considering how quick of a read it is. I am less certain however if I would recommend the movie. This is maybe one of those situations where you would be better off watching the movie first, and then reading the real story afterward if you found the premise at all compelling.

So yes… I am damning this with the faintest of praise. If nothing else it was an interesting journey that I went on yesterday. The novel if nothing else has some really damned good lines in it. I will leave you with my favorite:

words don’t matter unless they are walking the hard road to the truth