Carved 2024

Set in 1993, Cedar Creek’s Pioneer Village sits proudly as Maine’s First Living Museum, a living postcard where residents revel in historical reenactments and seasonal amusements that draw curious crowds. The town’s heartbeat is tied to the theatre troupe, the pumpkin-themed traditions, and the steady stream of visitors who crave a slice of the past brought to life. In the midst of this nostalgia, AJ, a U24 News anchor, is determined to squeeze every ounce of sensational detail from the horrific disaster that struck the quaint community a year earlier—a chemical catastrophe triggered by a train derailment linked to a company named CLIONYX. Yet the town’s leadership, led by General Manager Bill Brown and Head of Grounds [Kevin Turner], remains stubbornly focused on Pumpkin Fest, insisting the festival spirit should carry them through the aftermath rather than confront the darker chapters of their history.

Miles away from the bright festival lights, an unsettling discovery reshapes the season’s mood. Clint, the owner of the Corn Wagon, which does brisk business in Cedar Creek, unearths a grotesque pumpkin in the family patch. The pumpkin, shriveled and teeming with mutated growths, seems born of exposure to the toxic waste from the spill. Clint carves a face into it and hoists the mutated gourd into town, treating it as a curious oddity rather than a threat.

Back in the village, the live theatre crew and locals prepare for the pumpkin carving contest that will crown the season’s centerpiece. Kira, a young resident and the play’s director, and her brother Trevor, Wyatt Lindner, have been navigating a painful year after losing their parents in the cleanup. She is trying to piece her life together with her boyfriend Cody, holding on to the fragile normalcy of small-town life even as the festival fever builds around them. The town buzzes with rumors about the centerpiece pumpkin Clint brought in, and it quickly becomes the star of the event, drawing attention even from AJ and the media.

As the pumpkin takes center stage, the story shifts from festival cheer to a creeping terror. The pumpkin, in a chilling point-of-view sequence, seems to witness the slaughter of its own kind at human hands, a memory that fuels its thirst for revenge. When the costume of celebration gives way to fear, the monster rises with a calm, almost methodical menace, its tentacles reaching out to grab and gut those who cross its path. What begins as a spectacle in a pumpkin carving contest devolves into a night of massacre that spares no one—from Kevin in the security office to the festival’s organizers and writers, including AJ who is left to witness the horror up close.

The survivors—Kira, Cody, Trevor, Barbara, and Maddie—find sanctuary in a tool shed as the carnage erupts outside. Kevin, at a safe hiding place in the security office, crafts a fragile plan to draw the monster away: use walkie-talkies and a decoy strategy to lure the creature toward the shed and out of sight. The group quickly rallies around a plan to escape in Cody’s truck, but the keys are not on hand. A tense sequence unfolds as Kira orchestrates a distraction, using Kevin as the focal point of the ruse while Cody improvises to fetch the necessary keys from the staff building. The plan hinges on timing and signal, with the team hoping the pumpkin’s attention will swing away from their hiding place.

Disaster compounds when Kevin veers onto the wrong channel, and the monster locks onto his location in the security building. The group’s attempt to slip away is complicated further when Cody drops the ball in retrieving the keys, and the dark corridors slow their progress. Barbara keeps a cool head, seizing the moment to illuminate the path with AJ’s camera and a panel flash, buying precious seconds, but the price is high. The monster’s brutal verdad becomes undeniable as shelves and shadows meet a grisly reckoning—Bill and Kevin are found dead, their fates sealed by the creature’s merciless grip.

With only five survivors left—Kira, Cody, Trevor, Barbara, and Maddie—the escape becomes a harrowing test of nerve and cunning. The group initially believes they can bolt in Cody’s truck, but a cascade of missteps, misdirection, and misfortune keeps them entangled in Cedar Creek’s nightmare. Maddie’s fate becomes a poignant thread in the chaos: she is thought dead, her sacrifice presumed complete until a startling reveal clears the air and explains the strange red spray seen on the scene. Maddie confesses she was never truly gone; what appeared to be blood was the result of a chemical spray used as a decoy, a revelation that reshapes the group’s resolve to survive.

Seeking refuge, they find a temporary haven in Clint’s family barn, where a grim tableau awaits. Clint’s decapitated head, worn by the pumpkin as a macabre mask, haunts the space, and Clint’s father appears with a gun, only to confront a nightmare he cannot shoot away. The trio flees into a nearby pumpkin patch, chased by the monstrous vegetable and its growing brood. Realizing they are out of options, they use a barn as a gateway to a larger field, a grim realization that the monster’s power might be tied to its offspring.

Inside the patch, countless mutant babies lurk, and the monster exploits the terrain to close in. The group lures the monster toward a chaff cutter with a daring plan: trap the voracious creature with its own fearsome brood as bait and send it into the cutter, hoping to end the threat. The sacrifice of the moment becomes a regretful rite as the babies are coaxed into a row, then crushed under the teeth of the machinery, drenching the survivors in the eerie green fluid expelled by the device.

Morning light reveals a troubling truth: the extermination may not be complete. Trevor heads out to the patch alone, intending to stomp a remaining baby into oblivion, only to face a renewed onslaught of tentacles and danger. Maddie arrives just in time on her scooter to pull him back from the brink, offering a glimmer of hope and a sense that not all is lost. The group’s rescue and reckoning culminate when Kira, stepping into a leadership role, drives the chaff-cutting tractor through the remaining brood, exterminating the monsters in a desperate, decisive final act.

Yet the ending leaves a chilling echo rather than a neat bow. The next morning, a long shot reveals Clint’s head among a line of carved pumpkins, eyes and mouth carved in the same pattern that marked the pumpkin’s original transformation. A single tentacled tendril crawls from one vacant eye socket, hinting that the curse—and the creature’s hunger for vengeance—may not be entirely finished. The camera lingers on the scene, underscoring the uneasy truth that the town’s fears about the past were merely on hold, not resolved. The film closes with a sense of ongoing dread, a reminder that nature’s mutations and human recklessness can collide in ways that leave a town forever watching the shadows for the next sign of danger.