Spooky Season 2024: Carved Early Review

Carved is a feature adaptation of Justin Harding’s 2018 short film of the same name with Harding returning as director and co-writer. On Halloween night in 1993, 2 years after a deadly nuclear spill, the staff of a historic pioneer village attraction become trapped inside and must band together to survive a relentless assault by a sentient and vengeful pumpkin set on revenge. In the end, this silly B-movie knows exactly what it is and has a lot of goofy fun with its campy premise without ever taking itself too seriously.

For those going into this expecting to be scared or frightened in any way, they will likely walk out sorely disappointed because while the film technically falls under the horror genre, with ton of blood and gore to boot, it is close to a comedy that never takes itself seriously enough to be remotely scary. However, where it may disappoint in scares or frights, it absolutely makes up for in carnage. Though it does gets shockingly violent at times. it is never to a sickening or uncomfortable degree because of the over-the-top nature of it all. Meanwhile, it also features some very effective kills that are sure to leave an impact and make audiences squirm. Setting the tone early in an undeniably shocking and memorable fashion, it establishes the stakes and sets up the chaos to come.

For what was presumably made on a smaller budget, this one location film certainly makes the most of its premise, getting a decent amount of mileage out of it. The practical effects, design, and puppetry used to bring the pumpkin to life are all great, and the occasional more visual effects heavy shots look perfectly fine as well. On the acting side, the film is solid too with Lee, as Kira, and Fogelmanis, as Cody, making for serviceable leads who are easy to become invest in and root to survive. In terms of the supporting cast, Elvis Nolasco, from Hulu’s other recent original horror film Mr. Crocket, pops up for a brief but fun appearance, while it is nice seeing the likes of Chris Elliot (Earl) and DJ Qualls (Bill) pop up in something again. The latter, in particular, is not only a lot of fun, but also delivers the film’s biggest laughs.

A perfectly fine one time watch that will pass the time nicely, it ultimately isn’t anything more than that. For the most part, the characters aren’t anything special as audiences are barely given the chance to learn a lot about them by the end and therefore, care who lives or becomes a victim of the killer pumpkin. There romance subplot between Kira and Cody falls completely flat and drags the pacing to a halt whenever the film focuses on them. Also, its short film source material will become apparent as the story feels unnecessarily dragged out at times and despite being around the 90-minutes mark, it starts to overstay its welcome especially by the third act.

At the end of the day, Carved might be a little too silly and over-the-top for some, but in spite of that, still makes for a perfect spooky season viewing experience. While there are admittedly a lot of better horror films to choose from across multiple streaming platforms, for those looking for an enjoyable horror comedy, Carved is the perfect rainy day watch this October.

still courtesy of Disney

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Connor Carey

www.connorsmoviereviews.com/