Elizabeth Harvest

A woman is whisked away to her new mountain retreat by her enigmatic husband on her wedding day - it is clear everything is not what it should be.

This is a well made film with great acting and production and, to a minor extent, keeps you wondering. It does lack in story though.

The cast and characters are fantastic! Elizabeth is pretty and vapid like a doll - a counter point to Claire who is intelligent and has real sex appeal. Henry and Oliver are also great being both menacing and pathetic in their own ways.

The execution is very tight from Elizabeth's vacant witterings to the dirt under Henry's finger nails.

When all is said and done a lot of the story feels redundant and disjointed. The pace of the film is nice and leisurely setting up the characters with obvious care; but then - to get where the film wants to go - a lot of this has to be churned up.

With all the references to Fairy-tales and a malevolent patriarch this obviously has a theme of female empowerment and may appeal slightly more to a female audience but does not alienate men. Although a little too briefly it also touches on the pain of loss and, despite technology, the inevitability of death.

I enjoyed this film. It is different. I can't recall seeing another movie that is quite like it. Elizabeth is a newlywed who is honeymooning with her much older billionaire husband at his private mountain property. The only other people present are a female and blind male who are servants. The home is rather large and Elizabeth is free to enjoy all areas of the property with the only exception being a room that her husband, whom we learn to be a intelligent man of science, has specifically denied her access to. Elizabeth, who seems to come off as a bit ditsy, has a curious nature chooses to explore the room after her husband goes out of town on business. It is at this point she learns more than she bargained for and her life takes a turn for the worse. That is about all I can say about the plot without adding spoilers but I didn't see what was coming and I love that about this film. You are introduced to several different plot twists that pull you in different directions. I've seen that a few people weren't impressed by our lead actress and felt that her acting was off. I didn't feel that way. I felt that her acting was very much in line with her character and what may have initially seemed like bad acting is revealed to be a part of her character. I liked it and felt as though it was a good watch.

Elizabeth (Abbey Lee) is the new trophy wife of rich, older Henry (Ciarán Hinds). He carries his new bride over the threshold of his high-tech remote hilltop manson. Local cop Logan (Dylan Baker) is his close friend. Claire (Carla Gugino) and Oliver (Matthew Beard) are the two caretakers.

The first hour is a good Black Mirror episode. That's what this should have been. The flashback revealing the origin of Elizabeth is mostly unnecessary and slows the pace down too much. The second half could have been compressed with a more thrilling climax. There is a definite decline in tension after an important midway incident.

This movie is definitely something different, it was interesting and entertaining and somewhat engaging. Having just watched the movie I'm not sure how I feel about it yet other than I'm glad that I stuck with it, having been interested at first and then puzzled for a little bit until it started unfolding. They went out on a limb with this one and I think they got most of what they wanted, it is a good movie.

So this is something of a mixed bag: the girl playing Elizabeth herself is a model not an actress and this is noticeable right from the beginning: she looks pleasant enough standing still but she moves at all times like she's on a catwalk and tends to blow the illusion of whatever scene she's in whenever she starts to talk.

As the movie progresses though, and the first reveal occurs, this starts to seem like it might actually work to the story's advantage. There was another well-known film three years back which I won't mention for fear of spoiling, but it covers some of the same ground and takes one to a similar place but this one doesn't raise any of the same questions or emotional responses, which makes it a much less worthwhile experience.

Ciarán Hinds is good as always, along with Carla Gugino, but Matthew Beard is noticably weakest of all. On top of this there is some odd, clumsy editing, with too many scenes just awkwardly fading to black and slowing down the momentum.

So the film really has one foot in compelling sci-fi and another in bad B-movie drama/ TV soap opera. It's a good premise, though not really original or examined enough to feel groundbreaking, revelatory or even particularly memorable, and after the first twist there's no real point to the story and no interesting place for it to go. It's definitely watchable but largely pointless, and you'll never choose to watch it again.