The Pumpkin Man: Demon of Fall (2021)

There’s nothing really more Halloween than a villain with a pumpkin for a head, and “The Pumpkin Man” introduces what should and could be a fun horror villain. “Demon of Fall” watches a lot like a mix of “The Ring” if penned by RL Stine for “Goosebumps,” and I mean that as a compliment. It’s a short film with a small budget, but it has a neat concept I’d love to see translated in to a feature someday.

An amateur photographer named Jenny has traveled to an old house and its surrounding land to take pictures for her portfolio. It’s there that she finds an old book and promptly reads aloud from it. An incantation of sorts, it awakens the dreaded Pumpkin Man. A demonic monster with a pumpkin for a head, she can only see it when she looks through her camera lens.

When are people ever going to learn that if you discover a book of any kind, never read it out loud; especially if you find said book in an abandoned building or in a hole, or in some kind of church. Jenny is a seemingly talented photographer who accidentally reads a mysterious book she finds in the basement of an abandoned house. There she conjures up the Pumpkin Man, anthropomorphic mythical monster with a pumpkin head who stalks his victims. The fun aspect of his conjuring is that he can only be seen through camera lens’ leaving Jenny with one advantage that’s also her biggest vulnerability.

There’s so much potential here for a big feature, including the camera plot device, the implication that the curse can be passed on to someone else, and the idea that the pumpkin man can alter his surroundings to fit his means. Ryan Sheets does a bang up job creating this monster in such a small time frame, and I think it’d be great to see this monster with a bigger cast, and bigger budget somewhere down the line. For now, though, “Demon of Fall” is a nice Halloween treat with a fun pay off.