Horror Movie Review: Pumpkins (2018)

As synonymous with Halloween as egg-nog is to Christmas. Pumpkins sets the mind racing with an imaginative cover and a fun premise. Unfortunately, the full film doesn’t even come close to living up to it.

There is an elderly farmer (Terry Wood) who loves his pumpkin patch just a little too much. He runs afoul of a pair of local thugs. The pair enjoy nothing more then to torment the man but one day they go too far, effectively scaring him to death.

He falls into some kind of fertiliser he was putting on the pumpkins and later that night is resurrected as a pumpkin-headed monster (Will Metheringham). Not only that but some of the other pumpkins have become sentient!

Revenge is on the cards first but after that? Everyone is fair game including a group of survivalists who are unlucky enough to stumble upon his land.

Will they be able to survive the night of the pumpkins?

Pumpkins really should have been better than this and it’s a real missed opportunity. It could have been a glorious cheese-fest pouring the gore on and entertaining with some imaginative kills. It could have been but it is not.

Instead after an initial cool resurrection scene (no explanation as to how or why this happens) we get bog-standard slasher fare. The aim seems to be to make this monster a modern villain capable of several films but it just doesn’t work. It’s too ambiguous and unexplained to hold the attention for long.

Where the movie should have excelled is with its blood and guts but Pumpkins doesn’t manage anything interesting here. The deaths are uninspired and other then a bitey pumpkin, nothing will last long in the memory at all.

It’s not a terrible movie though. The cast are decent, the concept is sound and the monster itself looks good. It just could have been so much better then it was.