Harvest Lake

I think- emphasis on think- this was supposed to be an "erotic horror", you know of the kind that used to clog up the video store shelves in the days before the internet. You know. The ones where the images on the box were far more exciting than anything that actually appears in the film. I can imagine "Harvest Lake" has a pretty good box.

Rarely can a film have made sex seem so tedious. It belies it's relatively short running time by feeling interminable as you watch it- indeed time seems to stand still. And then it ends. Thankfully.

The "characters" are dull as ditch water, generally unappealing and not even particularly attractive. Eroticism remains elusive.

And they all liked happily ever after, Or something.

I have really dug some of Scott Schirmer's other movies/collaborations (Found, Plank Face, Headless, Space Babes From Outer Space, and to a lesser extent, The Bad Man). This one, not so much. Actually, I'm shocked there are some semi-rave reviews here. I will say this much about his movies, including Harvest Lake: They defy expectation. This is apparently his arthouse/sex/Cronenberg film.

The biggest issue I had with this movie is that it's underwritten. What in the hell was this about? Is everything just padding to get to the weird alien sex scene? Scenes (and characters) go entirely nowhere. Well, admittedly, whatever the scene, just leads to sex. If you're expecting another horror movie... you're wrong! I guess I can give this an extra star for rampant sexuality. And Ellie Church is always a highlight in whatever she's in. Yet, I was falling asleep a couple times.

This is not a horror movie. I repeat: this is in no way a horror movie. The only good thing I can say about this movie is the opening scene with the bleached blonde getting entirely butt naked. That's the only noteworthy thing about this movie. I think the director put that scene in there to keep the audience interested. Otherwise, I would have turned it off within 20 minutes. Yes, it was so boring, without the opening nude scene, I'm positive I would have stopped watching 20 minutes in.

At the 30 minute mark, I realized I hadn't seen anything, not one thing, remotely horror related: no suspenseful music, no tense atmosphere, no villain, no one getting killed or disappearing, no blood, no screaming, no running in fear, no victims, nothing, absolutely nothing horror related. I didn't turn off the movie, but I fast-forwarded. I fast-forwarded to the end and still saw nothing horror related. None of the horror elements I mentioned above showed up in the movie at all.

As a result, this movie is mislabeled as a horror. It's a drama fantasy. So if you've been mislead into believing this is a horror movie, either psychological suspense horror with little or no violence, or a gore/exploitation horror, or any other kind of horror, you'll find no horror here. At all.

As far as being a good drama/fantasy goes, it's not. The only thing horror related about this movie is the typical horror plot: unsuspecting young people spend a weekend in a secluded rural area with no cell phone reception so they can have fun with booze, weed, and free sex. The acting is mediocre, at best. The director is flat and uninspired. The cinematography is dull and unimpressive. The dialogue is pathetic (Characters say stuff such as, "Like totally whatever, cakeboy"). And the story is all over the place and nonsensical. Instead of the token black character, we have the token gay character. So there is some heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual sex going on in the movie.

All in all, it is mislabeled as a horror movie. There is nothing horror related in this movie at all. It's a drama/fantasy. But as a drama/fantasy, it fails for all the reasons I described above. Don't bother unless you like wasting your time watching amateur cinema.

This is what happens when you start filming a movie with very small budget and without a finished script. The "story" in the movie is enough for the first act, but instead of writing more story they just padded it out with shots of people in the woods looking for other people or just wandering about.

All characters are paper thin written with 15 seconds dialogue for some backstory, and that means that we don't care about any of them from the beginning.

Not is all bad though, the actors do what they can with the cringe filled dialogue and one of the toughest thing an actor can do is to look comfortable nude next to another nude actor, well they pulled that one off several times.

The setting is ( as proved many times before ) really good for a horror , or in this case mystery movie - but this one is far from a finished product.

Soft core porn disguised as a horror film. A real snoozefest, that had me falling asleep. The entity that came from the abyss, who and what was it? The creature from the black lagoon distant cousin. I clapped in glee as it ended, because it was painful to watch. Slow and boring with no climactic ending. Five friends rolling around in lube, this movie made me feel like I was in one of those sleazy time square theaters from the 80s, I didn't need a shower though, i needed some good sleep. Please don't waste your time watching this film, you might get better joy watching paint dry. Trust me, I'm good at picking movies.