Savage Harvest 2: October Blood (2006) – DVD Review

Film:
DVD:

Written by: Jason Christ
Directed by: Jason Christ
Starring: Emily Haack, Benjamin Gaa, Eric Stanze

Features:

• Commentaries by:
• Jason Christ
• Christ, producer Eric Stanze and effects guy Patrick Voss
• actors Emily Haack, Benjamin Gaa, Stanze and David Propst
• Behind the Scenes Documentary: ‘Harvest Season: The Making of Savage Harvest 2: October Blood‘
• Deleted Scenes
• Outtakes
• Stills Montage
• Short Films by Jason Christ
• Quiet Place
• Blurred
• Vision

Released by: Elite Entertainment
Region: 1
Rating: NR
Anamorphic: Nope; full frame only

My Advice: Rent It.

Going back home is always fraught with emotional landmines. Old loves and the sorrow of what could have been, old friends and their lives which have gone astray, and of course ancient demons trying to kill you and eat your flesh. Budding filmmaker Tyge (Gaa) returns to his childhood hometown after a fatal accident on set. He meets up with his best friend Deke (Propst) to decompress from the incident. Deke is also hosting another old schoolmate, Zack (Stanze), whose promising life was turned upside down after his family was slaughtered under strange circumstances. Tyge’s old girlfriend, Ashley (Haack), is also connected to this massacre by her sister, the only survivor. She committed suicide soon after and Ashley is trying to deal with the aftermath. When these four start looking for answers on the old murder site, they find to their horror exactly all those people and it’s still out for blood.

First off, you don’t need to see the original movie to get what’s going on. You may miss a few references here and there is you don’t watch the first Savage Harvest, but the filmmakers definitely made this their own movie. That brings me to my next point. There is something you should know about this movie, especially for gore fanatics. It takes about an hour or so before you get into any serious maiming and squirting blood. The first hour is used to build up both the characters and the sense of dread around them. Some are going to find this slow and boring. But I thought it helps you to care about the characters and feel some impact when something bad happens. These aren’t disposable teeny-boppers. When the gore does happen, it’s quite good for a low-budget production. The demon possessions and the bloody body parts look good and are “real”, not some fake looking CGI.

Now there are some problems with the movie. For instance, while the main group is fleshed out, several other characters have Just Demon Chow written all over them. There’s a jogger who pops up every once in a while with no seeming connection to what’s going on. It looks like she’s only in the movie to be eaten. There’s a subplot about trying to view a videotape for important information, but it falls flat and is merely a distraction. The movie also has a bad case of Ambiguous Ending. However, most of the problems are more due to inexperience on the part of the filmmaker than actual lack of talent. Trust me, I’ve seen movies made by so-called professionals with tons more money that sucked way worse than this one (Yes, I’m looking at you, Uwe Boll). I can forgive a lot when you have a scene with a chainsaw taking out someone’s crotch.

For a low budget horror movie, this DVD has a metric shit-ton of extras. There is not one, not two, but three commentary tracks. One is from director Christ himself and he focuses on the general process of making the movie: finding locations, camera shots, working with actors, etc. The second has Christ again with the producer Eric Stanze and effects guy Patrick Voss and this focuses on the visual effects, especially the gore. The third has the main cast talking about making the film from the actor’s perspective. You also get an extensive behind the scenes documentary along with the standard deleted scenes, photo gallery and outtake reel. Even with the multitude of features, you should only rent Savage Harvest 2 since its approach may not be everyone’s cup of tea.

1. Click here to buy Savage Harvest from Amazon.
2. Click here to buy movies from Elite Entertainment from Amazon.