Dark Harvest

This movie is proof that Alliance Atlantis do not review every movie that they distribute. I want my $5 back. The acting was horrendous, the lines were clichéd, and the camera shots were just like someone's home made video. The movie started out interestingly enough with the murders. The first two minutes was the only good part. The remainder of the film was fragmented with a stupid storyline and annoyingly bad actors. The costumes looked like something out of Superstore. At least put some thought into the costumes, man! The cover art on the DVD looks so scary, like Jeepers Creepers. But it is deceiving! I've seen Bollywood movies with more style and substance than this sad attempt. I couldn't believe Alliance Atlantis distributed this movie.

A young man, who never knew his birth parents, receives an old farm in an isolated section of West Virginia upon the death of his natural father. He visits his property with a cross-section of potential victims including the comic relief black guy and a trendy lesbian couple. (Hmm, will there be skinny dipping? Take a guess.) Unfortunately, the party comes to an end when the spirits of drifters killed by his evil great-grandfather and used as scarecrows come back for revenge. This film starts out well. An artful montage of depression-era photographs and phony newspapers set against a speech by FDR - this, I believe, is his first appearance in a killer scarecrow movie- establishes the mood. I developed some hopes for the film, which were partially realized. The story was serviceable enough. The setting was sufficiently bucolic. The photography was mostly in focus. The acting, while no great shakes, was slightly above par for horror movies in this budget range. The film might've actually worked within the narrow demands of the genre if the scarecrows were scary. But they weren't They looked cheap. They weren't frightening at all. The better the monster, the better the movie. These scarecrows wouldn't scare Dorothy, let alone Toto.

Terrible acting...how would you react if you just received an inheritance from the biological father you never met? For the guy in this movie it was as though the milk he just poured on his cornflakes was white. Bad special effects, good setting, and a skinny-dipping scene. That about sums up the movie...the truly irritating part is the story appeared to have potential in the first few minutes.

One of the best parts of the film comes during the credits. The film crew cannot figure out how to get fire from one place to another. They have fire on the ground...and it stays where it is. A stage hand comes over with lighter fluid, and sprays a lot of it on the ground in the direction the flame is supposed to go...then he goes to get another bottle of lighter fluid, and the fire finally reaches its destination. With special effects geniuses like that, it is no wonder the movie was so awful.

Rent this only movie if you're in the mood for laughs (for sheer stupidity) , as this movie wouldn't scare a bunch of kindergartners at a Halloween party! The trouble is, there is too much gore for kiddies, so definitely don't put this in your VCR for the toddlers. It starts off with a little bit of promise, giving you the impression that the box cover artist may have actually started watching this film before designing the cover, but then descends quickly into epic stupidity. The "killer scarecrows" are clumsy oafs that are about as scary as the one in the Wizard of Oz, but not quite as smart. If they'd only had a brain...? I got this movie for $1.20 at a local discount/close-out store and even so, I feel somewhat ripped off. I think with all the other comments posted here, if you actually pay to see this, you can only blame yourself.

I picked up this flick because the cover interested me. Boy was I mistaken. For a low budget movie it started out OK. Your standard group of horror movie teens go to a isolated house and get hacked up. At some points I thought that this film would come up with something new. No chance of that. Not even the skinny dipping scene could save this flick.

I knew it was a bad omen when I saw that the writer was also the director, OK that's not the bad part. Some writers work good as directors of their own work(this isn't one of them). The bad part is that the costume designer and I think the director of photography both share the last name of the writer/director. Now I'm all for using family on a film if they can do the job but come on. First of all the scarecrows looked as if their masks were bought at the local costume shop and weren't even scary(more like laughable). Second the camera work was really bad. In the first scene in the present day, when the lawyer gets up the shake the kids hand the camera stays in place and shoots his torso for a moment. Come on.

On the plus side(not a lot of plus's). The gore FX were not bad. Their is a nice shot of a scythe coming threw a door and threw a guy's shoulder. Hey, if you want a laugh watch the end credits, they show all the bloopers(which is what the whole movie seemed to be to me). The "hero" with his tragic past tries to come across with some cool one liners but they just made me laugh.

Somewhere in this flick was a good story but I couldn't find it. In the end I felt that I wasted $2.00 and 90 minutes that I won't get back.