Carving More Than Pumpkins: Carver (2015)

Carver (2015)

Rating: ***

Starring: Lea Davis, Mark Ryan Anderson and Alex Tordi

So this is another movie that's been under my radar ever since I heard about it; apparently this little number was directed and co-written by a then-preteen horror fan named Emily DiPrimio and looking into it, the movie certainly shows. Whether that's a good or a bad thing may depend on how well you can swallow a low-budget throwback slasher cheapie but I can assure you, dear readers, that it does have its cheesy little charm.

The scene starts at Halloween, 2007; young Silas Cochran and Penny Doyle was just walking home when a group of obnoxious kids try to bully them into handing over the XBox they won from a pumpkin carving contest. The confrontation leads to a chase in the woods and poor Silas and Penny ended up falling into a pit, which the kids accidentally caused and swore to keep quite about. 

Skip ahead eight years later and it's Halloween once again; Silas and Penny's disappearance is considered by the town as an unsolved tragedy and the kids responsible for it are now young adults who have done their best to hide their involvement, albeit on a varying degree. Most of them went on to make up the town's prized football team, while one became a creepy outcast who keeps a lot to himself, but all will soon find out that their little secret have caught up to them as someone's leaving them pumpkins with the same creepy clown carved into it and a cloaked figure with a pumpkin mask is seen skulking around town, slaughtering people with a sickle...

Done under the estimated budget of $30,000, Carver (2015) is honestly a decent throw for a slasher movie despite suffering the same mishaps and trappings one would expect from a low cost production; the writing is hammy and predictable at its best, the cornball acting can be stiff at times and the camera work can definitely use some more tweaking, but the pacing is steady, the direction has focus and, most importantly, the film isn't shy on giving us a generous amount of splatter. It's not gonna break any new grounds, but for what it is able to achieve, it is at least fun in a hokey B-grade slasher way and, hell, it even manages to workably throw itself into sudden grim territories as we eventually find out what happened to the two kids who fell into the pit and, oh boy, it's dark. Like, unnervingly dark. And tragic.

Clocking over only an hour and fifteen minutes (credits included), Carver (2015) is a small yet passable slice of humble slasher pie, one that is a little rough on the edges and has a little whiff of cheese on the side, but a true labor of horror love from an emerging talent, nonetheless. 

Bodycount:

1 female shot through the head

1 male had his throat cut with a sickle

1 female hacked on the head with a sickle

1 female hacked on the head with a sickle

1 male stabbed in the chest with a sickle

1 male gutted with a sickle

1 male gets a sickle through the jaw

1 female had her throat cut with a sickle

1 male strangled with a bead necklace

1 male slashed across with a sickle

1 male had his throat cut with a sickle

1 boy dies from injuries sustained from a fall (flashback)

1 male hacked to death with a sickle (flashback)

1 female hacked on the neck with an axe

1 female hacked on the gut with a sickle

Total: 15