Carved review
Huluween is back with another oddball release featuring a killer pumpkin targeting forgettable characters…as all B-level slashers should.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Carved
Directed by Justin Harding
Written by Justin Harding and Cheryl Meyer
Starring DJ Qualls, Chris Elliott, Elvis Nolasco, Corey Fogelmanis, Matty Cardarople, Peyton Elizabeth Lee and Jackson Kelly
Carved Review
We’re going to begin this review of Hulu’s latest Huluween release Carved with a bit of a disclaimer. A lot of what you’ll read may sound negative. It may come across as if Carved isn’t worth your time due to paper thin characters and a tone that doesn’t match the silliness of the premise. Those things are true…and we’ll get into them…but they shouldn’t stop you from giving it a watch this spooky season. Sometimes intentionally, sometimes not…Carved recreates a beloved era of slasher films. I’m talking about the B-level kind. The movies that saw Halloween and Friday the 13th and said “I can do that” …but couldn’t. It knows the beats. It knows the format. But it lacks any understanding of the “why”.
A killer pumpkin rises to extract vengeance on a group of people trapped in a historical reenactment village. Let’s stop right there and examine this for a moment. Close your eyes and picture what you expect that movie to look like. It’s funny, right? The movie you are imagining is full of laughs to match its unserious premise. Carved doesn’t do that. It plays things out as if the sentient pumpkin isn’t the wildest idea for a Halloween slasher. No one seems to think this is the funniest possible way to go. It relies on the silliness of the idea to bring some charm to an otherwise routine slasher experience. And…it kind of works.
Is Carved a great movie? No. I’m not sure if it’s even a good movie. But…it is an oddly fun throwback to when bad movies were their own kind of good. Movies that don’t seem to understand that they are totally ridiculous and should be tonally ridiculous to match. Carved may be doing this on purpose. It doesn’t matter how it gets there. What matters is that it does.
Intentional or not…Carved’s slide into B-movie slasher allows us to examine it as it should be examined. As a bad slasher movie that has elements worth checking out. Namely, and this was a long way around to the same point we started at, its ridiculous antagonist. The killer pumpkin is fun even through some questionable CGI usage. It’s surprisingly gory…but not like Terrifier gory. The characters are nearly all instantly forgettable…but that’s been a part of b-level slashers as long as they have existed.
The biggest question about Carved ends up being…who is this aimed at? It’s either a silly Halloween slasher that is surprisingly foul mouthed and gruesome or a…no…that’s exactly what it is. Like if Stranger Things suddenly had CGI decapitations and kids that swore every other line. Which means there is probably an audience for it. I’m just not sure who. Adults will want more of everything than it gives…but it clearly isn’t made for kids. There’s probably a 13–15-year-old range where this will feel new or edgy. I don’t know. I was left alone watching A Nightmare on Elm Street when I was six years old. What do I know about what kids should watch?
There’s a lot of “hide and wait” following a massacre scene. But it has an oddly watchable charm perfect for both spooky season and the Huluween brand. Silly, but not funny. Played in a serious way that is kind of funny because it’s ridiculous. But some levity would have been alright too. The comedy comes from the pumpkin. How it moves. How it kills. The fact that it genuinely cares about other pumpkins. The presentation of a straightforward slasher with an absurd antagonist has its charms…but it also has a shelf life.
There is, of course, a cast of characters for the pumpkin to target. Director Kira (Peyton Elizabeth Lee), her brother Trevor (Wyatt Lindner), her boyfriend Cody (Corey Fogelmanis) and a group of various other reenactors/technicians who are stuck inside the village when a killer pumpkin comes alive due to previous toxic oil spill. Also, some stoners, a reporter and a war veteran…because we are deep in slasher movie logic here. Plenty of bodies for the pumpkin to jam its CGI vines into.
If you need a story…Carved does have some things for its characters to talk about. Relationships and the future most of them will never get to see…the kind of stuff you’d find in a movie like Friday the 13th Part III. Which, despite being a lower-level Jason movie, is a compliment. How much time should we invest in characters whose entire purpose during the time we’re with them is surviving a murderous sentient pumpkin? Less, I say. Less.
The choices Carved makes put it into B-level slasher territory. The kind of movie that is best left to viewers not looking for a deep thought exercise. It does the requisite things needed to get people from point A to point Dead…and has a fun antagonist awaiting them. It could have been funnier…it could have been more absurd…but it would have risked becoming a bad watch instead of a (perhaps purposely) bad slasher that is a good watch. I’ll take the latter every time. Especially during spooky season.
Scare Value
Carved captures the spirit of B-level slashers in a lot of ways. It’s silly…but played far too straight. The characters are instantly forgettable and only present to meet their inevitable demise. The characters that have some stakes have a better chance of living, of course. It’s all very by the numbers…relying on its wild antagonist to draw you in. Does it work? Not really. But the more bad slasher movies the better.
2.5/5
Carved Link
Streaming on Hulu
