chris’s review published on Letterboxd:
This review may contain spoilers.
The Pumpkin Karver is a mediocre slasher film set around horror's favorite day of the year, Halloween.
The film is typical horror fare: a bunch of horny, drunk teenagers who get together for a party in the middle of nowhere where no help is and let the bodies pile up as the final girls scream and cry as they're being chased by the killer.
I hate to say what I said about the film, but that's what it is. It's nothing we really haven't seen before.
I will admit that the film has some cool special effects, but most of the gore and torture is off-screen, which sucks because it would have been so cool to see the killer do what he did to Minka's character's face. Oh, yeah, popular actress Minka Kelly plays in this movie. Sadly, she dies a horrible death when I was rooting for her character for the entire movie. I might be biased because The Roommate has a soft spot in my heart, but I was rooting for her character more than I was for the surviving characters.
The dialogue is extremely cheesy and sounds like something in a really bad teen drama. It's bland, predictable, and just completely falls flat.
Speaking of things falling flat, the screams in this movie are just terrible. There's only one somewhat decent scream in this entire movie, and you don't hear it until about an hour and fifteen minutes in.
The way the film is acted is just... bad. There's not really a good way to put it. The actors try their best with what they're given, but half of the actors couldn't act their way out of a paper bag, of course, except for Minka Kelly.
The movie plays around with a few concepts, including a supernatural-like mind-controlling demon thing, which is demonstrated (poorly, might I add) at about maybe forty-five minutes in. I would've rather the film stay a mediocre slasher than the movie not even knowing what it wants to be.
Also, how does Jonathan get that "Trick or Treat" message burned into his stomach?
It's confusing, and we don't even get an answer at all during the movie, except we might've because I was checking my phone every other minute to see how long this movie had before it was over.
Watch it if you like cheesy mediocre horror films and are just looking for a somewhat fun time. If you're not, stay away from this movie.
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