"Dark Harvest" sticks closely to its supernatural horror roots without sidelining narrative for modern identity politics. Character roles are traditional, and identity factors are rarely emphasized over story or development. It’s refreshing to see a film that doesn’t shoehorn diversity for its own sake but lets the horror and small-town Americana setting drive the plot.

The film centers on classic themes such as rural tradition, masculine coming-of-age struggles, and family legacies. There’s little apparent subversion of traditional values, and the story treats local folklore and stakes quite seriously, no winking at the camera about how backward small-town values are.

Alternative perspectives aren’t mocked or reduced to strawmen. Instead, characters grapple with a cursed tradition, giving a range of moral responses to a morally ambiguous situation. There’s no obvious modern ideological slant, and the cast’s viewpoints reflect plausible human conflict rather than uniform, sanitized messaging.