Slickly produced old-school slasher movie with generally above average acting, notably from star/executive producer Amy Weber, who made an effectively unbalanced heroine in the underrated slasher flick KOLOBOS almost a decade ago. Lindsey Carpenter is also very appealing as the lovely art student who falls for our traumatised hero (Michael Zara).
The Halloween night pre-titles sequence features the fetching Weber “attacked” in her underwear by a pumpkin masked “killer”. It’s just her boyfriend participating in an unbelievably extended and cruel prank, but her brother (Zara) mistakes it for the real thing and stabs the jokester repeatedly. Oops! One year later, the siblings attempt to leave the past behind by moving to the ominously named town of Carver and joining a costume party, but Zara is still haunted by the earlier events. It doesn’t help that a killer is on the prowl, razor-carving pretty faces and leaving behind cheery written-in-blood messages like “Trick or treat, time to carve something sweet”.
This likeable movie tests our patience with a pair of uber-annoying, tripping party dudes specialising in self-consciously wacky bug-chugging antics. There are also way too many silly, loud false scares of the “You scared the shit outta me!” variety. Still, the movie’s pleasantly retro feel encompasses a local old-timer who rants at length about evil and “decent carvers turned sour” – twenty years ago this guy would have been played by R.G. Armstrong.
THE PUMPKIN KARVER is tame for the SAW era, with the few deaths spread quite thinly, but you do get to see a hapless victim pushed on to an industrial sized drill and there’s a pleasingly creepy reveal of a girl’s face carved up like a human pumpkin, a candle shoved in her mouth. The movie also deserves plaudits for a sequence in which a guy beheaded while peeing in the woods continues pissing on his own severed noggin for several seconds afterward.
-Steven West
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
