Blood Harvest (2023) (USA)

⭐️

Thanks to her husband’s gambling debts and lack of employment, Jessica and her family move into a farm owned by her uncle Ollie. Her psychic son Jake begins having visions of a horrible murder almost immediately. These visions feature a distressed woman begging for her life and the folks forcing her into whatever the hell they’re doing, talking of a sacrifice needed to save the crops. Not a great start to a shitty situation caused by husband Neil. Jake and his sister Maggie start looking into the odd bones of the farm and Uncle Ollie seems put-off by the new living situation. All I’ll say on that is the townsfolk were a bit pushy about Ollie letting the family come stay at his home. There’s a whole bunch of people making serious faces and off-putting sound design (which drowns out some dialogue) while everyone walks around and acts cranky. There’s a bunch of flashbacks to go along with the other flashbacks presented as psychic visions which pop up randomly and feature Robert LaSardo. There’s also a menacing scarecrow out in the field. Jason London is there as a townie and I don’t know why but I always find it comforting that he’s seemingly aging realistically. Neil (looking like the punchable offspring of William Fichtner and WWE ref Charles “Lil Naitch” Robinson) is one hell of a chode, mom is concerned but she’s also a moron, modern-day Robert LaSardo warns the sister she needs to take her brother and flee, a ghost communicates through an old CB radio and you spend a lot of the opening act just waiting for Neil to get what’s coming to him. The kids are set up for slaughter to insure prosperity but of course things go wrong and the corpses pile up. LaSardo and London are an asset but are underutilized and when things finally do get somewhat interesting, there’s been too much of nothing for far too long involving people who are way too unlikable to let the film slip into my good graces. They also use that opening heavy breathing and whispering of “get ready” from WWE’s The Brood entrance music. I’m not sure why but it was something I noticed that made me smile, and I was desperate for anything to bring me joy during the trek through this pointless swamp of shit. The poster makes it look like we may have a killer scarecrow on our hands… I assure you, we do not.