La moisson maléfique

I submit that inside the genre of independent film making, mediocre is worse than bad. Dark Harvest is so stereotypical that it should be shown to film students as a textbook example of how not to make an indie horror film.

The script, you would suppose, is the one area where an indie film can triumph over a Hollywood blockbuster. If you're writing it yourself, you can put in any combination of the bizarre, the shocking, the horrible, anything at all that you might think would keep an audience interested. That just wasn't done in Dark Harvest. There is nothing to keep you interested, just the standard slasher movie plot, not done very well, with unoriginal monsters and uninteresting characters.

I won't bother with the boring and predictable plot covered by other reviewers, nor the wooden acting, lousy monster costumes and moronic dialogue. If you've read the other reviews you already know that much, and it's not arguable - the movie is simply that bad.

It's not bad in that way which intrigues those who enjoy bad movies. In those cases, the movie is so bad that it's good - but Dark Harvest isn't. It can only aspire to such depths of bad film making. Instead, it is so middle-of-the-road, suburban white-bread generic that there is just nothing to capture your interest.

Is there any good in it? Well, there is a mid-morning skinny dipping scene that is entertaining for about a minute, if only because of the display of female posteriors. That's only one minute, though, and it's never repeated, so if you're in the market for a horror movie with skin - this isn't it.

Let's do a checklist of all the things that make a good, or at least interesting independent horror film.

Good script? No. Good acting? No. Bizarre, unpredictable? No. Shocking, graphic? No. Special effects? Not special. Gratuitous nudity? Not nearly enough. Original ideas? Nope. Humorous, campy? If you enjoy watching ice melt. Any reason at all to watch it? None I can think of.

It's pretty much a waste of film and time. Not good enough to watch, not bad enough to be used as a yardstick to measure other films by.

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.

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.

Picked up this movie since it supposedly took place in my home state of West Virginia. I was pleasantly surprised when they show a map of the fictitious 'Carson County' and it's right beside my hometown! The background and the build-up was great, right up until the scarecrow popped up. It was all downhill from there. Very lame. You can hear crows in the background during the daytime, even they aren't scared. It was more humorous than scary. If you look at it as funny, then the movie is a winner.

I woke up and it was a beautiful day; the sun was shining, the birds were singing and i fancied getting a movie, something new, a horror movie perhaps? Like many other reviewers i came across what can only be described as a piece of poopy in a gold wrapper. The front cover is great, and the comment on the back is mesmerising - 'it will scare the crop out of you'...oh how i chuckle looking back at such naivety and ignorance.

One of the many things scarier than this movie is the acting skills of these 'actors'. I think, no, i did actually cheer when they got slashed up by these 'scarecrows', who were wearing some classic fancy dress costumes. I used to drive quite quickly past cornfields as i found them to be pretty scary at night, but having seen this movie, i nearly wet myself (through laughing so much) just at the sight.

I have seen scarier omelette's quite honestly, not mine though, i'm a dab-hand at cooking omelette's, and if anyone associates this movie with my omelette's, let's just say that i would create a situation in which they would be forced to watch this movie 3 times in a row.

If anyone has any good corn movies they can recommend, feel free to inform me. It's a great comedy if nothing else, OK it is nothing else. Enjoy, but a little advice - before pressing the play button on your DVD player, throw it out of the window.