NIGHT AT THE HARVEST is a grisly spine tingler. Scary scenes in the movie trailer are the tip of the iceberg. This is the third horror feature film created by the Carter Ink Films team of Carter (co-director, writer, and director of photography) and Morgan (co-director, producer and lead actor).
[The film features a diverse cast, such as Aeric Azana (FALLOUT 76, PYRAMID GAME), Jim Cirner (SHOOTING STARS, DARK CHRONICLES) and Brittany Isabell (DARK CHRONICLES and OMEGA.} It’s on Apple TV. Soon to be if not already on Amazon. Fandango, Voodoo. Physical copies will be on sale in on Walmart online or Best Buy online.
{The fimmakers said once they get links to the actual releases, they’ll be posting about it. Also, can be found on nightoftheharvest.com website where they funnel all the information to pre-orders, press releases, and more.}
NIGHT AT THE HARVEST is a grisly spine tingler. Scary scenes in the movie trailer are the tip of the iceberg. This is the third horror feature film created by the Carter Ink Films team of Carter (co-director, writer, and director of photography) and Morgan (co-director, producer and lead actor).
[The film features a diverse cast, such as Aeric Azana (FALLOUT 76, PYRAMID GAME), Jim Cirner (SHOOTING STARS, DARK CHRONICLES) and Brittany Isabell (DARK CHRONICLES and OMEGA.} It’s on Apple TV. Soon to be if not already on Amazon. Fandango, Voodoo. Physical copies will be on sale in on Walmart online or Best Buy online.
{The fimmakers said once they get links to the actual releases, they’ll be posting about it. Also, can be found on nightoftheharvest.com twebsite where they funnel all the information to pre-orders, press releases, and more.}
Q&A With Chris Carter and Jessica Morgan. Edited for Context, Accuracy, Style – and to Avoid Spoilers
Part 1
the WORD (Gregg Morris)
Why did you guys make this movie? I mean, what was your thinking?
Chris
What we wanted to tell was a story that was built around the origins of Halloween in Samhain. Halloween is exceptionally popular, but I don’t think many people know where it came from, how it got to be so popular. {Halloween according to a recent Harris Poll, ranks as the third most popular holiday after Christmas and Thanksgiving. Among Millennials, it is second, beating out Thanksgiving.}
We were looking to explore a story that had started back when Halloween wasn’t trendy. It was actually a very dark holiday. We wanted to live in that space and introduce horror lore elements to that. We wanted to see how that would play out in a current day scenario as well be based on trauma.
{Note to Readers about Samhain. Samhain, Sauin or Oíche Shamhna, according to Wikipedia, one of reviewer Gregg Morris’s favorites for fact-checking, is a Gaelic festival celebrated on November 1, marking the end of the harvest season and beginning of winter or “darker half” of the year. It is also the Irish language name for November. Celebrations begin on the evening of 31 October, since the Celtic day began and ended at sunset.}
Jessica
For my part, I’m really into Halloween. It’s been like a family tradition kind of thing for me. It was fun to go look into. We both enjoy the horror genre, and so it was fun to work on a horror film that focused not only on Halloween. Also, about family dynamics with Halloween and relationships as well as for building family within friends and stuff like that. We have a lot of those kind of themes going on in this movie as well.
the WORD
This film, was there a prequel or this is a sequel to a previous film that you guys put together?
Chris
No, no, this is an original piece. We’ve done things that are in the Halloween space before this. Jessica and I have also co-directed those as well. No, this is a standalone project.
the WORD
It was great, but it wasn’t gory, but there was a lot of slicing and dicing. I mean, the way that you guys selected scenes and the way the people were killing each other, I had mixed feelings about it. I was all over the place, wow one moment and shuddering the next. There were times … I’ll try to explain my mixed feelings. Sometimes I thought there was some kind of comedy going on underneath the scenes. Then there were other times when I thought that I just couldn’t get my head wrapped around what was happening right there before my eyes (because I was caught off guard or in the middle of being astonished). After I do this interview, I’m going to go back and watch the film a second time. With films, I can’t do a film this long, watch it once and write a review. I can’t do it, I miss too much.
Even before I started doing film reviews, I noticed there were films that I would watch and I didn’t like. For some reason, days or weeks later, I would be drawn back to see them again for some reason and realize I missed the whole thing about what was going on, what the movie was about. There were things going on in the movie that I didn’t like and I suddenly liked then whole lot.
This movie, I have to do it a second time.
Chris
Just to clarify the format of this, you’re not going to post what we’re saying verbatim, so we can actually talk about some of those intricate details that you’re referring to. I know part for me, the reason that we had the sisters do that was because it was a luring tactic. In so many instances as the writer, we wanted to put you (audiences) in a position to find people to kill because you have to because of the curse that’s befallen to this family.
Again, I talked about Samhain earlier and where I was going with this, this curse had afflicted this family for no reason. In fact, it happens in the monologue when one of the sisters is talking to William when they’re looking at the giant skeleton. As she’s saying that, she’s basically talking about how her family had been chosen to represent this curse.
How this lineage must complete the harvest every year or something terrible happens to the entire family. That’s the premise that we have going into. As a product of having to do that, the sisters find the most effective way to … lure people into a sense of security … that’s why they were doing that.
Jessica
Audrey, the character I play, she has accepted that this curse is happening and she’s kind of embraced it. Even though she gets a kick out of it, she’ll lure these people in and then she enjoys doing what she has to do while her sister Madison, she’s the one I think that’s struggling with it. She doesn’t want to kill people. She doesn’t want to do this and that makes her really mad.
think that’s where you see that anger coming from, is that it’s like she’s been chosen to do this and she doesn’t want to do it but she has to. She’s just mad about it because she hasn’t accepted it fully, I guess, in my kind of opinion from a character standpoint.
I do think what Chris said about her monologue to William, that’s giving you the full overview story of their family has been cursed to do these things that they have to do. It’s just the dynamic between the sisters where one has accepted and one hasn’t.
the WORD
Well, are there any movies that you drew upon in the process of doing your movie? Because there seemed to be some John Carpenter in the film. I could be wrong at this, and if I am just point it out. The John Carpenter Halloween thing where Michael is never dead. I mean, whenever it looks like he’s dead, he’s not dead. That was more interesting towards the end of the movie. I mean, that’s when I clued into the movie because I couldn’t be certain that someone was dead. I didn’t know what the hell was going to going on. It was flip-flopping back and forth. I just thought maybe other films might have influenced you or you thought about them when you were making yours.
{Note: The real issue is this: The reviewer was being influenced by the aesthetics of former classic horror movies as NIGHT OF THE HARVEST, an original standalone movie was in my face, so to speak.}
Carter
I don’t think our film had a moment where we tried to play that someone was dead and then came back alive. I’m not sure where that came from, but I can tell you that as far as I think every horror maker that lives in the space of having a traditional seasonal film, whether it’s BLACK CHRISTMAS or HALLOWEEN, they draw from Carpenter.
Unfortunately, well, I can say fortunately, we dipped our toe, but we didn’t want to go swimming in that pool. What I enjoyed most was what Dean Cundey, the DP, did for that in which he created a character that could be in the shadows. In fact, I’m sure that Michael Myers was called The Shape initially. I mean, everybody knows that. {NOTE: This reviewer-writer, a self-appointed film aficionado, was in the dark about The Shape.😎}
It was like how we wanted to create our film in the sense of: There is something ethereal going on. For the long part of the movie, maybe half of it, you have no idea who is what and whom you can trust. When you talk about a second watch, I absolutely hope people go back and watch it a second time. {Note: The best usually require more than just one time.} There are things that we put in plain sight that on the second watch you’ll be like, “That’s why that’s there.”
Up until the point where we’ve put up a scene where Jessica’s character goes up to Brittany’s character. We have three scarecrows as garden gnomes in that tracking shot. Well, if you want a second watch, there are three sisters that use scarecrow masks.
We took painstaking lengths to make sure that we have these things peppered into the story. We didn’t really try and there wasn’t one singular film that influenced us. I would say HALLOWEEN III, there’s a small part in that, which again, funny enough, wasn’t directed by Carpenter and actually was panned by a ton of people. {Note: Yep.}
As time went on like most good films, it created a following that maybe sought something other than the HALLOWEEN that didn’t have Michael Myers in it. It was the SEASON OF THE WITCH. In here (NIGHT OF THE HAREVEST), the big bad talks about Samhain and how the veil between the living and the dead is thinnest on HALLOWEEN and the lore that comes along with that.
Jessica: Was there anything that you think that we drew off of in terms of crafting the story?
Jessica
Yeah, I do think Carpenter is a good vibe for that. I do think we do really love his stuff.
the WORD
I seized on Carpenter because, well, because it was HALLOWEEN. It’s in my head. But I don’t think it’s fair for me to say that HALLOWEEN influenced your film or you had to reach out, that there was some kind of connection. Also, you’re right, you got to see this film more than once. There’s no way anyone could just see this film once. There’s too much going on. It’s got that cinematic intensity rare for horror. {By now NIGHT OF THE HARVEST is on Apple TV and several other platforms.} How long did you guys work on this movie?
Jessica
Chris started working on the script deep in the Pandemic. It went through a few drafts before we really got to working on it. It probably took about two years. Then we sat on it. We finished it last October, but then we knew we wanted to release it in October time or near Halloween because of its theme. It did sit there just until we could get distribution and get it out there.
the WORD
You’re working on this during the pandemic. What were some of your big challenges trying to keep this going, trying to keep people healthy? Trying to deal with all the craziness that was going on when the Pandemic was shutting down everything?
Jessica
We definitely were lucky we only had to shoot a few scenes when it was still pretty heavy mask time and everything. For us, it was that, it was just try to stay healthy, try to wear our masks on set. The actors couldn’t during their scenes, so we had to be the safe ones. Then we did testing and stuff. I’m with you, it was a challenge to do that. We had luckily done some other short films during this time, so we were a little more used to that about prepping people, letting them know when that shoot date was so they could stay healthy during that time and getting everything ready and just glove up if you got to touch people. All those safety things you had to do for COVID.
the WORD
Where did most of the filming take place?
Chris
That took place in the warehouse. We were fortunate. Jessica and I actually are from Tucson, Arizona. We have developed a relationship with one of the haunted house owners in Tucson. It’s called The Slaughterhouse and they helped my career immensely. We’ve been shooting films there, or I’ve been shooting films there, since 2000 and maybe 10. Then we went back and we’ve maintained that relationship and we were able to go back. They let us shoot most of our film there. Basically, from the middle of the film on was filmed in Tucson, Arizona, in May.
Click here for Part 2 of the Q&A
Publisher, Editor Gregg W. Morris
Can be reached at gregghc@comcast.net, profgreggwmorris@gmail.com