Elizabeth Harvest

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.

I watched this movie last night and I have to say it is growing on me. The more I think about it, the more I like it. I certainly agree it is slow. It's intentionally slow, but excessively so. My wife gave up on it because of this. After making it through the whole movie, here is what I like:

It has some plot twists that are unexpected, but also make sense in the context of the movie. They don't come out of nowhere and I like the backstory the twists add.

The acting, especially by the lead actress, is great. I really thought she brought Elizabeth to life.

The brooding cinematography set the stage for the confined nature of the film. It was not excessively depressing though.

Overall, not a perfect movie, but I liked it a lot.

I am not sure why this movie has received such a low IMDB rating. I got hooked from the very first scene and since then it was a quite intense ride indeed. There was never a moment I felt bored. I especially found cinematography, editing, and score really fascinating. Setting of the movie in an isolated location only adds to the intrigue of the story. Beautifully done thriller all around.

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.

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.