Movie Review: NIGHT OF THE HARVEST

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: October 4th, 2024 / 03:35 AM

NIGHT OF THE HARVEST movie poster | ©2024 Gravitas Features

Rating: Not Rated
Stars: Jessica Morgan, Brittany Isabell, Aeric Azana, Jim Cirner, Taylor Falshaw, Ashton Jordaan Ruiz, Autumn Gubersky, John Noble, Steve McKee, Jesse Pickering, Angelica Ornelas, Dustin Rieffer, Michaela Ivey
Writer: Christopher M. Carter, story by Christopher M. Carter & Jessica Morgan
Directors: Christopher M. Carter & Jessica Morgan
Distributor: Gravitas Features
Release Date: September 24, 2024 (digital)

NIGHT OF THE HARVEST is a low-budget but decently-made Halloween horror slasher. It has a couple of strong plot twists, and succeeds in keeping us guessing if something supernatural or just psychotic is occurring. However, directors Christopher M. Carter & Jessica Morgan, working from a script by Carter based on a story by both, can’t quite create a consistent tone.

On October 30, John (Dustin Rieffer) arrives at the home of a pretty young woman (Michaela Ivey) for a date. The house is laden with Halloween decorations. We see a masked figure lurking outside the window. Whoever it is eventually gets inside.

On October 31, we’re in the Southern California Valley. We meet Madison (Brittany Isabell), a depressed young woman who’s on medication. She seems traumatized about something that occurred a year ago on this date.

Madison’s older sister Audrey (filmmaker Morgan) is doing her best to cheer up her sibling.

Madison’s social circle includes her boyfriend Dane (Jim Cirner), Dane’s single best friend William (Aeric Azana), devoted couple Riley (Taylor Noelle Fanshaw) and Jacob (Ashton Jordann Ruiz), and Halloween-loving eccentric Joyce (Autumn Gubersky).

Since Joyce’s rich parents are out of town, she proposes that the group have a party at her parents’ isolated home in the forest. Audrey persuades Madison to go with her.

Madison needs to work up to this, though, and stops in a bar where she encounters William.

And then the twists start coming. Several characters astutely observe that the party site looks like it has been decorated over a period of days, not in the past few hours. What’s up with that?

We guess the correct answer to this, but there’s a big game-changing surprise ahead.

This would be great, except that the filmmakers are sometimes going for character study and sometimes going for high camp, sometimes dark comedy and sometimes drama. The intention seems to be to create levels, but the effect is uneven.

When John shows up in red-framed glasses, a red bowtie and red suspenders, he looks like he’s out of a ‘70s sitcom. He’s so visually cartoonish, right at the beginning, that it takes us awhile to understand that we’re meant to take some of this seriously.

Likewise, a few twists later, it seems like there should be more explanation of why something that hasn’t happened before is happening now.

NIGHT OF THE HARVEST has its merits and its deficits. Whether the former outweigh the latter or vice-versa is best determined by the tastes of the individual viewer.

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