I’m a man who enjoys a good monster movie. Give me your The Blobs, your Slithers, your Pumpkinheads. I want them all. Not the Pumpkinhead sequels no. Keep those. But give me the first one. I love them. A simple premise, some solid effects, and a rad climax are all I ask for. Unfortunately, Justin Harding’s Carved doesn’t quite pull it off.
The premise of Carved is, on paper, fine: one year, during the annual Cedar Creek Pumpkin Carving Contest, contestants are attacked by a sentient and monstrous pumpkin that is dead set on avenging its fallen brethren. The survivors of the mayhem must find a way out of a town and a way to stop the pumpkin from reproducing Audrey II style before it’s too late. It’s a classic monster/castle siege movie that is nothing groundbreaking but also at the same isn’t the worst idea for a monster movie.
Carved’s biggest problem is its reliance on agonizingly underdone character tropes coupled with grating, hammy acting. I understand that there are times when there are characters who are supposed to be annoying, but in Carved it just feels like there’s too many of them and it becomes cluttered and frustrating. Having a monster kill a bunch of faceless red shirts is fine. There’s no need to make some of them jerkoffs that you’re simply waiting for to die instead of actually enjoying the film. It’s like if Savini’s NOTLD remake had three or four more Coopers in it instead of characters you actually wanted to make it. It gets very old very quickly. Everyone trying to be the comedic performance of the film turns it into obnoxious cacophony that will have you yearning for the film to just end.
This isn’t an entirely irredeemable film. DJ Qualls as the head of the local chemical company is unsurprisingly delightful, and the secondary story about him and his assistant is oddly touching. The creature’s origin story (the result of a toxic spill from local chemical company) and the impact said spill had on the town is a less than subtle critique of big business ignoring the impact their industry has on the local population, and any commentary on the destructive nature of capitalism is always welcome. The creature design is familiar but still creepy, and there’s a handful of genuinely effective creepy moments in this movie. And, for what it’s worth, there’s a boner joke in this movie that I had to pause it for because I was laughing so hard. So, it’s not entirely unsuccessful. But overall, it feels weighed down by trying to be more than it can be.
