Customer Reviews

The Pumpkin Karver

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I could see this film gaining a small cult following based on some of the antics it contains. For example, when the funny character dressed as the Incredible Hulk helps out with a wheel barrow full of pumpkins he does a quick flex, "and.. tight!" I cracked up.

It's the tale of a kid who is a talented pumpkin carver (though we never get any back story until later), who kills his sister's boyfriend in defense of her during a halloween prank gone awry. That part was pretty good. They move out to a small, country town, where they meet up with some local kids at a halloween party featuring a pumpkin carving contest.

During the party our lead character starts having some strange episodes, imagining his sister's dead boyfriend is coming after him. He meets a local cutie and starts hanging out with her, then meets her jealous, hot-shot x-boyfriend. A creepy old man is lurking around the place too. Seems it is his land, and he is a pumpkin carver too.

We're not sure who's doing the killing - the old man, an angry lover, or the ghost of the dead boyfrend - but one of the girls gets carved up. Another kid loses his head in the pumpkin patch, then all hell breaks loose and our lead man's love interest gets killed too. I was kind of saddened by that loss. I was hoping she would end up surviving in the end, but that's not the case.

There's a twist ending, and plenty of gore, and I think there may be room for a sequel, but I'm sure that depends on what kind of response this first movie gets.

Pumpkin Karver gets three stars from me because, while the story is clever, it seems a little sloppy in the end, and I never did understand the need for the electricity effect, seems like someone got carried away with the digital effects technology. The acting wasn't top notch either, especially the lead character, but in all it wasn't too bad.

I would watch this movie again, mainly because it had some humorous moments and some great scares. All in all it's a pretty good movie. Hey, I've seen worse.

I've read nothing but negative reviews of this film; I haven't even found a single horror reviewer with anything good to say about it. Certainly, some of the criticisms are valid, but I still thought Pumpkin Karver was a pretty darn good horror movie. I don't know why it's so hard for some people to sit down and enjoy a slasher film these days. They decry the formulaic nature of modern horror films, then complain when a film like this one doesn't follow the same old tried-and-true formula they claim to despise so much. Worst of all, they criticize the lack of gore in Pumpkin Karver. Now, as you might already know, I crave blood and gore as much as anybody out there, but it's not the be all and end all of every single horror movie. I don't judge a slasher film by the number of dead bodies it stacks up over the course of an hour and a half. I also don't demand that every horror film I watch explain everything to me at the very end - a little ambiguity isn't necessarily a bad thing. Okay, so the ending of Pumpkin Karver is a little goofy, I'll grant you, but at least it wasn't written in blood from the very beginning.

The opening scene of Pumpkin Karver ranks right up there with Scream, The Ring, and maybe even Halloween, if you ask me. I won't give you any details, but I will say it takes place on Halloween and involves a babe, a murder, and a surprise - and it leaves one young man rather emotionally scarred. So how do you move on from a pumpkin-related tragedy? Apparently, you move to a town called Carver and take part in a big Halloween party with a bunch of silly teenagers with names like Bonedaddy and Skinner. Things are definitely looking up for young Jonathan Starks (Michael Zara), as his seriously hot sister Lynn (Amy Weber) has hooked him up with a hottie named Tammy (Minka Kelly). There's just something about Tammy; she isn't exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer, and her voice is a little on the squeaky side, but she definitely has IT. Unfortunately, not everyone is in a partying mood. Tammy's former boyfriend still thinks he owns her, this weird old dude keeps popping up and going on and on about the art of carving and how he likes to carve the evil out of people, and there's also a Pumpkinhead dude who seems to be haunting Jonathan. In case you're wondering, drunk, goofy kids in silly costumes will definitely die on this night.

I don't have a problem with the gore and special effects. It's all pretty well done (with one dude meeting with a most ignominious end), even though the whole "carving" aspect of the murders seems to come and go. The weird old farmer dude is a bit of a problem, though. With all of his monologues about the art of carving, you know he's either the killer or the biggest red herring you've ever seen. Then you've got Jonathan having all these weird visions of old Pumpkinhead, so you don't know if he's just nuts or if the dude really exists. These facets of the story do make the whole story a little bit on the lame side, but at least they keep you guessing as to the true identity of the killer.

Basically, Pumpkin Karver is just a fun, little slasher film that dares to be a little different. I found it more entertaining than many a film in the genre, but it's obvious that a lot of horror critics think it's a stupid waste of time. Call me old-fashioned, but booze, babes, and blood is still enough to entertain me. If I enjoyed this film, I'm confident that many other horror fans will, as well. Just don't try to overanalyze it - it's a slasher film, for Pete's sake.

I must first admit that the opening scene of this movie sucked me in. The elements from "Halloween (1978)" mixed with the Corey Feldman character from the "Friday the 13th" franchise was quite intriguing and, despite the lack of originality, promised to be a good watch.

Any semblance of a good movie ended there. Not only did the plot fail to even partially materialize, the character development was entirely nonexistent (and most likely hindered greatly by the lack of acting talent); I found myself trying to sympathize with any character onscreen, but the only time I came close was in the opening scene when I almost felt sorry for the guy who got killed accidentally. The pop-up scares were cheap and, after the first two or three, too predictable. The makeup was atrocious. Editing could have been much better. The ambiance could have redeemed the picture a little, but considering the film was set in a pumpkin patch/pumpkin farm, every attempt at creating a creepy undertone was over-ridden by its own kitsch.

By the end of the movie, I felt like I'd just watched an hour-and-a-half long porn with all of the nudity and sex edited out. Do yourself a favor if you're considering watching this title: don't do it. Pick something else, anything else, it doesn't matter. Movies don't get much worse than this.

For the movie itself, I give 2 stars at best. It is not particularly scary, the plot is very sub-par, and most of the acting is just God-awful. With that said, there are three saving graces: a creepy old man who takes an absurd amount of pride in his ability carve pumpkins, and the two greatest frat/party guy characters I have ever seen in any horror movie: Bonedaddy and Spinner. Their names alone are great enough to rank them highly in ths category, but from the very outset they make it clear they are only interested in booze, drugs, and maybe sex (although they may prefer each other to any female characters in the movie). These two are a constant source of intentional and un-intentional humor, and Bonedaddy's death is one of the greatest I've seen in a horror movie. He is beheaded while taking a drunken piss, and ends up pissing in his own mouth. Spinner's escape leads me to believe that perhaps the directors will make the greatest decision of their lives and make The Pumpkin Karver 2: Spinner's Revenge, full of partying and Bonedaddy-revering.

The Pumpkin Karver starts out with an interesting premise. Two actors who can't possibly be related (attractive but not particularly good actress Amy Weber and mopey Michael Zara) play the Stark kids, their lives forever changed on Halloween night. It seems Lynn (Weber) has a very poor taste in boyfriends (David J. Wright as Alec). He's one of those hyper-offensive jerks that's so ridiculous you can't imagine him surviving for very long in the real world. But never you mind, because this is a slasher film, and Pumpkin Karver puts neon flashing lights around those of weak moral character so we know they're going to die.

And die Alec does. The twist here is that he dresses up as a pumpkin-faced killer (see the connection?) and assaults poor Lynn. Convinced she's in danger, Jonathan (Zara) stabs Alec to death. What was supposed to be a prank turns into a terrible tragedy. There's something to be said for mimicking Terror Train. It's what Pumpkin Karver does with it that matters.

Continuing the too-stupid-to-live trend, the Stark kids go on a trip to a town named Carver known for its pumpkin carving - because it makes perfect sense to go to a Halloween party surrounded by knives on the anniversary of your sister's boyfriend's murder.

And so we have a cavalcade for cretins, all there to die for our amusement. The difference is that in Pumpkin Karver the actors all seem to be trying to outdo each other by chewing as much scenery as possible. There's the drunken frat boys who are so ridiculously focused on getting high that they make Shaggy look tame, so they of course deserve to die; the hot chicks who shamelessly tease boys but slap them just when things are about to get R-rated, so they of course deserve to die; the fat guy who's funny but secretly lusts for the Final Girl, so he deserves to die; and the psychotic ex-boyfriend of the love interest who isn't above physically assaulting her, so...you get the idea. In short, there's not a single redeeming character here, including the love interest who switches boyfriends at the drop of a pumpkin.

Unfortunately, director Robert Mann isn't really sure what to do with his slasher. There's no room for another generic killer that hasn't already been covered by Voorhees or Myers, so new kids on the block need to have a shtick. If your killer's specialty is to carve people's faces up like pumpkins, then he'd better do just that.

The Karver doesn't do that though. Instead, he shows up as a nightmare sequence, skewers and beheads people, shoots lightning bolts out of his eyes, and otherwise tries to be really spooky without sticking to what he does best. There's also an old man thrown in for good measure who makes a half-hearted attempt to connect Jonathan's father with a tradition of carving pumpkins.

Oh right, the whole pumpkin carving thing. What that has to do with the price of a gourd is a mystery, but Old Man Wickets (Terrence Evans) is there to remind us that this movie has a theme tied to Halloween. This is a movie that was hoping you'd watch it on Halloween.

Notice I didn't write "rent it." Pumpkin Karver really commits to trying to scare you, complete with the villain showing up during the credits and reminding you how scary it will be when you walk to the parking lot. Unfortunately the killer is kind of a moron. He's much scarier with his mask on.

And that's the thing about Pumpkin Karver. When the mask is torn off, it's just another lame attempt to cash in on Halloween moviegoers. It's less concerned about having a coherent plot and more concerned with teenagers connecting the movie to a date. This trick works precisely once, and now that Pumpkin Karver is on video it's no treat.

After a promising opening set up, this film falls victim to horrible dialogue and bad acting. It's not a total loss though as I thought the murders in this film were much better than the usual fare and showed some sense of style. If the dialogue was better this could have been a pretty good little Halloween film, but decent gore sequences can only do so much. I do not expect grade A writing from these types of films, but when the dialogue takes away from the story, then it becomes a problem. Regardless, it is certainly a fun horror film for undiscriminating viewers and fans of oldf fashioned slasher films..

The Pumpkin Karver (Robert Mann, 2006)

Somewhere inside the bland, predictable, unscary mess that is The Pumpkin Karver is a brilliant meditation on trauma, mental illness, and coming of age just waiting to emerge. And that makes it all the more annoying that we got this movie and not that one. But what really gets me was the big plot twist at the end. Not that it was handled badly during the big reveal, but that it was so badly handled during the rest of the movie that I couldn't believe they were using it as the big reveal; I really had no idea that they hadn't meant the identity of the killer to be obvious from about ten minutes into the movie. In other words, yeah, I was going to talk a lot in this review about the disappointment of failed potential until I got to the last scene. Now I don't know where to go with this at all.

Michael Zara stars as Jonathan Starks, who, in the opening scene, makes an understandable but fatal mistake resulting in the death of his sister Lynn (Son of the Beach's Amy Weber)'s boyfriend Alec (David J. Wright). Fast-forward a year. Jonathan's family has moved to a new town after the police cleared Jonathan of any wrongdoing, but he's still suffering from crushing guilt. Jonathan and Lynn are on their way to a Halloween party where Lynn is hoping to snap Jonathan out of his funk by fixing him up with her lovely college friend Tammy (Minka Kelly, currently on TV in Friday Night Lights). While Jonathan is certainly interested in Tammy, he still hears in his head the voice of the Pumpkin Karver, the monster Alec was dressed up as during the murder. Then the Pumpkin Karver appears, and the bodies start piling up...

Jonathan's character is fascinating, and were it presented well, as a high-pressure drama or a thriller instead of the straight horror film Mann and writer Sheldon Silverstein went for, this might have been a real sleeper hit. Unfortunately, they went for the straight horror film. Character development is sacrificed to the (tame) gore effects, leaving us only three halfway-developed characters and a bunch of cardboard cutouts who exist for the purpose of getting killed. Even when we do get some depth to the characters, we get almost no chemistry in their interaction. But even this pales in comparison to the way the big "mystery" angle is handled. I'm not even sure what phrase to hang on the treatment of it-- ham-handed? incompetent? nonexistent?--because the flaws in it are so fundamental and so pervasive that it's almost impossible to approach it from a critical perspective. When I say I really didn't realize the "secret" wasn't supposed to be obvious to us from before the big Halloween party even starts, that's not an exaggeration. It's not just that it's obvious, it's not even disguised, really. And it's not as if Silverstein (The Killing Jar) and Mann (Trapped) haven't done this sort of thing before. They should know how to write a thriller to make the killer a mystery. And yet they fail here, in the largest and gaudiest possible way.

And thus The Pumpkin Karver leaves me more confused than anything else. I can't recommend it, but it does have a certain auto-accident drawing power to it. Once you start watching, it's impossible to stop until you see just how low it can go. **

OK, this wasn't a 100% fantastic movie but I enjoy Halloween based horror movies/slashers and this was actually pretty good. It had a decent amount of action and the cinematography wasn't bad AT ALL. It had fair acting and some very different style kills. The ending was a little odd but I find myself saying that about a lot of films nowadays. I think this would make a good movie for a rainy weekend night, especially Halloween night ;). I'd also like to add, this is NOT one of those homemade quality movie. I've seen so many of those floating around lately, I am SO SICK of it. I guess that's what made this film a bit more refreshing, it was good quality rather than that grainy, shakey, homemade movie style. Enjoy!

3.5 STARS
Going into this movie I didn't have high hopes of a movie that was even watchable, to my suprise I enjoyed it from beginning to end(mostly). Saying that it was the same formula with parts interchanged from past movies, like most from this genre of movies. The thing that really turned me off was the ending it reminded me of Halloween 5, but ultimately seemed an unnecessary twist. It also contains it fair share of overacting, with that said it didn't detract from the movie because some people drinking alcohol do overact in real life so it is completely pausible. Still there are quite a few moments of chessy nonsense that I can overlook. At least give it a rent it is a decent horror movie with some good kills.

For a low budget film this would be 4 stars. I was surprised by this little slasher film. Certainly the acting could be better and some of the special effects are a little shaky, but all in all it is a great effort, and I would love to see what the director could do with a larger budget to work with. The story follows a brother and sister moving to a small rural town after the brother accidently kills his sister's jerky boyfriend during a Halloween prank. Soon, the kids of town start dying. You have a bunch of suspects, from an angry ex boyfriend, a creepy old man, and the brother himself. The ending is decent. If you would like a low budget surprise, pick up this little slasher movie.