Halloween is a pretty good excuse to let your imagination run wild. For The Carvening, Matthew Incontri combined animation, live action, and a lifelong love of horror. He made the short in just three weeks. The result is a playful little nightmare about two brothers, a forbidden VHS slasher, and a Jack o’ Lantern killer who may be closer than they think.
It’s also a very different side of the filmmaker we previously met through Motion Pictures, his deeply personal 2D animated short about friendship, creativity, and cancer. That film turns animation toward something intimate and emotional. The Carvening, on the other hand, lets Incontri have fun with the movies and Halloween traditions that helped shape his creative imagination.
From Storyboard to Screen
One of the most interesting parts of The Carvening is seeing how quickly the film evolved. Incontri had the idea on a Monday. He shot the live-action portion the following Sunday. With so little time to prepare, he created rough storyboards to guide the production. They still left plenty of room for improvisation on set.
Some of those changes were pretty substantial. The original version featured two pumpkin people making out before being murdered. Incontri eventually trimmed the scene down to one pumpkin victim. The killer also went through a major transformation. Instead of a human wearing a human mask, the final film imagines a world without humans. That led Incontri to a pumpkin’s greatest fear: the endlessly staring scarecrow.
Animation Meets Horror
Inspired by Patrick McHale’s Over the Garden Wall and John Carpenter’s Halloween, The Carvening finds plenty of room for both scares and humor. Chris Kas brings the live-action scenes to life through cinematography, while Beau Batchelor tackles the slightly ridiculous challenge of acting with a 20-pound pumpkin on his head. Dillon Cahill’s sound design adds another layer of menace, and Matthew’s brother Adam Incontri provides the voice of the frightened younger brother.
Matthew grew up in Calgary and was raised in Massachusetts, surrounded by animation and movies. After graduating from Massachusetts College of Art and Design, he moved into the Los Angeles industry, working across character design, storyboarding, animation, and directing. With The Carvening, those interests collide in a wonderfully strange Halloween package. After seeing what he can do with both heartfelt storytelling and horror comedy, I’m curious to see where he takes live action next.
