Carved is clearly a short film stretched beyond its limits to reach a full length feature. It’s so full of padding and mediocre family drama that it even calls itself out on it. They just should have made it a segment in an anthology horror film.

Carved is allegedly a horror/comedy about a killer pumpkin. Unfortunately, most of the humor ends at the words “killer pumpkin”. During a Jack o’ Lantern carving festival, the malformed giant pumpkin comes to life and starts killing people.

You know what’s both funnier and scarier than a killer pumpkins? Well, a hell of a lot of things… but what I was getting at was a Jack o’ Lantern. Without a face, a killer pumpkin – especially this pustulastic rotten pumpkin – is just a round shape. And how does a pumpkin move? If you thought rolling like a Killer Tomato, you’d be wrong. It grows vines (tentacles?) and ambles around like a giant spider.

Because, yeah, this really isn’t a killer pumpkin movie, it’s a giant spider movie. You see, the pumpkin moves around in cost-saving silhouette most of the time and looks basically like an oversized spider. Sure, sometimes its legs act more like tentacles but <waves hands around> what’s the difference?

But, hey, they don’t have to achieve scientific accuracy in their killer pumpkin movie. They just have to make a good enough creature feature to make it to ninety minutes without boring the audience. And, for me, they failed miserably. The first act set up is ok and the lead actress Peyton Elizabeth Lee is bright and charming but everything after the pumpkin comes to life is boring. They can’t figure out how to make a scary movie, much less a gimmicky killer pumpkin one.

This is a great big mound of mush. The killer pumpkin ain’t no Great Pumpkin and it ain’t no Pumpkinhead and it certainly ain’t no Arachnophobia (though it accidentally tries). It’s generic mediocrity at its most limp and uninspired.

Score: 68