Meredith’s Reviews > Dark Harvest > Status Update

“That’s the way the cards hit the table if you live in a town where winning is just another name for losing.”

“Of course, the October Boy knows what stands between him and the church. Packs of teenagers roaming the streets like armed villagers in some old Frankenstein movie.”

“There isn’t much to think about, really. He already understands that the past can’t be changed. Now he’s beginning to understand how easily it can be repeated. That is a hard truth — born of memory, cemented by experience.”

"But, hell, I'm wasting my breath telling you about this stuff. I'm preaching to the choir. After all, you know how it feels to go face down in that hole ... You've been buried in that black dirt. And you through the ground the next summer, first a green shoot and then a tendril. You climbed that pole and filled those old clothes, and then Halloween rolled around you were shorn like a winter wind."

What if the winners of this game don't really leave?

Here's the thing with "willing suspension of disbelief." A scarecrow magically comes to life on the night of Halloween while its Jack O'Lantern head is being carved, yeah, I totally buy it. It could happen. Said scarecrow can drive a car, no, that's completely unrealistic. I don't believe it.

"You remember how it feels to go nose-to-nose with a legend."

"You remember how it feels to go nose-to-nose with a legend."

Every Halloween this small Midwestern town observes a ritual hunt for the "October Boy," a scarecrow with a jack o'lantern head brought magically to life each year. After being locked in their rooms without food for 5 days, the teenage boys are turned loose, hungry and crazed, to attempt to catch the October Boy before he reaches the church doorstep.