Aahana Swrup
‘Carved’ Hulu’s comedy horror film flips the narrative on classic pumpkin carving traditions and presents the story of what happens when the carved becomes the carver. Directed by Justin Harding, this film employs a dark comedy route and follows Kira, a young playwright with a broken heart who participates in her town’s historical reenactment village. Consequently, her brother Trevor—and an assortment of other personalities—participates in Bill’s pumpkin carving contest to celebrate the holiday in all its gourd-guts glory. However, in the mysterious Cedar Creek, the same turns out to be a dangerous decision as one peculiar pumpkin somehow comes to life. Consequently, Kira and the other contestants become the prey to an inexplicable monster in a Halloween hunt for revenge.
The film delights in its absurd premise, offering a captivating and campy story perfectly befitting the spooky holiday. As Kira and her friends find themselves with a vengeful pumpkin on their tail, their predicaments inevitably become a point of interest. SPOILERS AHEAD!
Carved Plot Synopsis
In 1993, on Halloween, the residents of Cedar Creek put on a historical reenactment Pioneer Village, which invited the attention of the local news outlets. Nonetheless, reporter AJ Campbell seems infinitely more interested in tricking the townsfolk into speaking about the recent chemical spill accident that unfolded near the town. Naturally, the grounds manager, Bill—who prefers not to talk about the spill—tries to divert his attention toward the town’s actual Halloween festival. As such, he encourages AJ to interview the cast of the local theater production led by director and screenwriter Kira.
Kira and her boyfriend, Cody, are the town’s resident artistic dreamers who have plans to move to New York together. However, during the interview, Kira unceremoniously learns that Cody has recently been offered a gig in the big city. Predictably, the sudden news doesn’t go over well with her. Moreover, she’s worried about the effect Cody’s unexpected departure may have on Trevor, her younger brother, who has formed a strong relationship with her boyfriend since the death of their parents. Meanwhile, on the other side of town, Clint, who poorly manages his family business, “The Corn Wagon,” ventures out to the fields while his father fixes up their old truck.
During his walk, Clint comes across a strange pumpkin and decides to harvest it for himself. Afterward, he takes the pumpkin to the town festival—only to be reprimanded by Bill for his tardiness. Nonetheless, even though he loses out on the job, his friend benefits from his presence by taking his recently harvested pumpkin to enter the carving contest. The contest sees numerous entries, including Kevin, Bill’s partner, aspiring actor Shane, Trevor, and more. Although the competition begins with much glee and excitement, the crowd soon finds themselves in for a surprise when Clint’s pumpkin comes to life. Consequently, the pumpkin flips the script on the participants and begins slicing into them with her vines. As the monstrous gourd lays waste to the crowd, some of them—including Kira and her friends—manage to hide in a barn.
Yet, unlike Bill, Kevin gets taken by the pumpkin. The survivor’s group that gathers inside the barn starts as a dysfunctional team but begins to see the importance of working as a unit. Soon after, Bill discovers that Kevin is actually alive—thanks to his walkie-talkie. Additionally, after observing the pumpkin monster skitter outside for some time, Kira gets struck with inspiration. Thus, she decides to take over the reins and direct the group’s mission to escape the pumpkin’s violent attack.
Carved Ending: How is the Pumpkin Alive? Why is it Killing Humans?
From the get-go, the story’s biggest mystery emerges from its central antagonist, the vengeful pumpkin. Although the pumpkin’s supernatural abilities remain evident from the start, the narrative creates a bit more mystery around its genesis. Nonetheless, the explanation remains clear once one knows where to look. Throughout the story, several characters reference a chemical spill that left a stain on Cedar Creek and its residents. It’s the same incident that orphaned Kira and Trevor and brought Maddie’s family’ to the town for cleanup. Given the incident’s tragedy, people prefer not to talk about it. Yet, the same becomes impossible to ignore once the monstrous pumpkin’s terrorization begins.
Therefore, the narrative leaves behind bits and pieces of a backstory for the audience to assemble. Not much too long ago, the town fell victim to a disaster after an ambiguous company, Klionic, faced a derailment issue that resulted in a chemical spill. The chemical spill caused several deaths, yet its most sinister after-effect went unnoticed by most townsfolk. The unidentified but dangerous chemical seeped into the fields on the outskirts of town, permeating into the pumpkin patch. Consequently, the chemicals messed up the harvest’s biology, infusing them with partial sentience and inexplicable abilities.
For the same reason, once Clint brutally severs the pumpkin from her patch, he unwittingly unleashes a mutant monstrosity upon the town. Even so, it isn’t until the carving contest that the pumpkin truly shows her violent colors. Therein lies the pumpkin monster’s motives. The pumpkin is only after those whom she has witnessed tearing and slashing into her fellow gourds. She saw the humans gouging out the insides of other pumpkins—a unique horror show designed solely for the pumpkin monster. As such, now she wants revenge by turning the tables on the humans.
How Does Kira Stop the Pumpkin Monster?
Once Kira and the others come to terms with their outlandish reality, there’s only one thing left to do: survive. Therefore, escaping from the barn remains their first—and most important—order of business. After realizing that the pumpkin monster has hearing abilities, Kira comes up with the plan to use Kevin’s walkie-talkie as a distraction for their enemy. Since Kevin is hiding out in a separate building, he can catapult walkies out to the field and lure the pumpkin one way or another. The same gives Cody the opportunity to bolt out to the lockers and snag his car keys while the others covertly make their way to the parking lot. Predictably, the plan ends up sporting some holes, thanks to Kira’s worst nightmare: bad improvisation.
For one, Trevor decides to follow Cody to the lockers after an argument with his sister. This leads to a ripple effect, which causes the older boy to drop his keys into the vents. On the other hand, Bill grows agitated at hearing his partner in what are likely his last moments. Since Kevin injured his knee when the pumpkin attempted to drag him away, he can’t make a run for his life like the others. Nevertheless, when he attempts to say his goodbyes to Bill, realizing the pumpkin is coming after him next, the other man forsakes his own safety and rushes to his aid.
In the end, the plan spectacularly spirals out of control—taking Kevin, Bill, Shane, and Maddie’s lives. Nonetheless, Kira, Trevor, Cody, and Barbara manage to make it out of the place alive by hijacking Clint’s Corn Wagon. Once inside, Barbara looks through AJ Campbell’s camera to examine the footage of the initial attack. As such, she notes that the pumpkin is only going after the carving competition’s contestants and anyone standing between them. Thus, Kira realizes that Trevor has a target on his back. As if on cue, the group discovers that the pumpkin monster has started following them in their escape.
Around the same time, Clint—who has been stoned out in his truck this whole time—wakes up. Since he’s entirely oblivious to the recent events, he tries to take hold of the steering wheel, which results in the truck’s inevitable crash. In the aftermath, Kira, Trevor, and Cody play dead to trick the pumpkin monster into leaving them alone. Fortunately, their paper-thin plan succeeds after a perpetually oblivious Clint attracts the pumpkin’s attention. Unfortunately for Clint, the same results in his own brutal death. Eventually, following a few more near-misses with the monster, Kira and the others find themselves in the original pumpkin patch.
At the patch, the trio makes an intriguing discovery once they come across a bed of baby pumpkins that seem to have the same peculiar coloring as the monster pumpkin. Consequently, once the monster catches up to them at the field—and makes a beeline for Trevor with her vines—Kira holds a baby pumpkin hostage in a feat of quick thinking. It turns out that the pumpkin has as much compassion for the young as she does for others of her kind who have been carved. Therefore, she lets Trevor go, allowing the trio an opportunity to run away and into a shed.
Finally, with the pumpkin monster’s weakness revealed, Kira concocts the perfect trap for the gourd giant. She and the others lure the monster into the barn with the baby pumpkin as the bait. Naturally, given her intrinsic draw toward her kind, the pumpkin monster goes to the baby—and falls in the farm shredder’s line of sight. In the end, once the pumpkin is caught in their trap, Kira and the others pitchfork her in place until the shredder splinters her into pieces.
Does Trevor Survive?
After the revelation that the pumpkin monster is really only after those who have hurt other pumpkins in her presence, Trevor becomes the only potential surviving target. Nonetheless, it remains evident that Kira and Cody would fight until their last breaths to save the boy. Despite their young age—and currently tumultuous relationship—the two young adults remain the closest thing Trevor has to parental figures. Likewise, both Kira and Cody deeply care for the kid, as they often prove by ensuring his repeated safety. However, even though they destroy the monster in the end, Trevor isn’t entirely out of the red yet.
In the aftermath of their horrifying night, Trevor ventures out to the pumpkin patch to see the baby pumpkins again. At the moment, he holds much contempt for the gourds—since he’s lost so many of his friends to one of them. For the same reason, he moves to step on one of the baby pumpkins—determined to erase their kind from existence. Nonetheless, as it would turn out, the baby pumpkin isn’t as vulnerable as Trevor thought. As such, it whips out a vine to wrap around the boy’s throat. Still, the boy evades death once again when an unexpected face—Maddie—arrives to his rescue. After saving him from the particularly violent baby pumpkin, Maddie, joined by Cody and Kira, delivers the baby pumpkins to a fate similar to that of the monster pumpkin—turning them into farm feeder fodder.
How Did Maddie Survive?
With the pumpkin monster—and its younglings—destroyed, only one mystery persists in the story. How did Maddie make it out of the pumpkin attack alive? At the festival earlier, Maddie encountered an unfortunate fate when the group faced a sharp change in plans to use the Corn Wagon instead of Cody’s compromised car. During the evacuation, Maddie realizes she has left her flute back in the barn they used as a cover a moment earlier. Something about the flute’s sentimental value pushes her to become a cliche that she has been criticizing so far—and run back into the arms of danger.
Naturally, on her way back, Maddie ends up getting intercepted by the pumpkin monster. Thus, Kira and the others watch in horror as a blood splatter paints the opposite wall, declaring their friend’s death. Or so they thought. In actuality, once Maddie finds herself backed into a corner, she’s able to think quickly on her feet and come up with a solution. From the beginning, she has proven herself to be a bit of a botany nerd.
Therefore, in the eleventh hour, Maddie uses the same knowledge and attacks the pumpkin with a mixture of pesticides and herbicides that she finds nearby. The chemicals resemble a splatter of blood, which fools the others into assuming her death and escaping without her. The pumpkin monster is targeting carvers—and Maddie is a designated plant lover—the title doesn’t apply to her. As a result, the monster leaves her alone. Thus, Maddie survives the night and returns to save Trevor—all through the skill of good improvisation.
