See The First Terrifying Look At The Dark Harvest Horror Adaptation

By April Ryder | Published

Dark Harvest

Fans of the novel get their first look at the Dark Harvest movie as the official trailer makes its debut on YouTube. The upcoming film is a visual adaptation of the original 2006 horror novel written by Norman Partridge, and fans are excited to see what filmmakers have done with the story. 

Dark Harvest brings the hit 2006 horror novel to life, exclusively available digitally.

The newly released trailer for the film gives fans their first look at the story’s main antagonist, Sawtooth Jack. Directed by David Slade, Dark Harvest will be released digitally on (Friday) October 13, just in time for Halloween. 

The movie stars Casey Likes (from Spinning Gold and Everything Must Go), Elizabeth Reaser (The Haunting of Hill House), Luke Kirby (No Man of God), Jeremy Davies (Spanking the Monkey and The House That Jack Built), and Emyri Crutchfield (Amazing Stories, 2020). Michael Gilio wrote the script for the film.

Little is known about how well the movie will parallel the story of the book, but the trailer gives some pretty significant hints that it will definitely be in the same ballpark. The movie synopsis says that the film is set in a curse hamlet (or small town) where every annual harvest “becomes a brutal battle for survival.” 

Dark Harvest was originally supposed to hit theaters in 2021, but it was delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

On Halloween night, Sawtooth Jack, a scarecrow with a jack-o-lantern for a head, will rise from the cornfields, posing a fatal threat to all of the children of the town. Every year, a group of boys (girls are forbidden from taking part in the hunt) gets together to go out to the fields and defeat the evil scarecrow before the stroke of midnight. 

Dark Harvest

In the book, whoever is successful at stopping the terrifying entity from making its way to the town’s church before midnight is rewarded with a free pass to leave the hamlet, a new home, a new car, and a year’s worth of free bills. 

Played by Casey Likes, the main character of the novel adaptation Dark Harvest, Richie is a rebellious outcast whose brother won the night the year before. Though Richie is forbidden from joining the run this year because of his brother’s win the year before, he finds a way to get in on the action anyway. When Richie decides to join the run, he makes a shocking discovery and faces a game-changing choice of action. 

Dark Harvest will make scarecrows terrifying again, with the hunt for Sawtooth Jack setting the stage for screams, and of course, jump scares.

If the movie follows the story of the book, there are some dark secrets held within the walls of the small hamlet. There’s more to the story than meets the eye, as there is with every great horror flick. The trailer even hints at the underlying darkness to be discovered. 

If you want to see the new Dark Harvest movie on the big screen, you’ll be hard-pressed to find your way into a theater. The movie will only be released for one day on October 11, 2023, in Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas before being released digitally on Friday the 13th. There is no official news yet on which streaming channel will have the rights to the new movie, so keep an eye out for updates on that issue.