The Harvest

The Harvest came out of nowhere for me. It's a film about power and deception, which makes for a truly fantastic film. This film gets well under your skin, making it a very effective psychological thriller, NOT a horror. The one thing I truly love about this film is that it gets straight to the point. It starts off fast, there is no filler, every scene has a point and the finally is epic and perfectly paced.

The Harvest really did surprise me. With such low user ratings, I was expecting something overly pretentious or just plain bad; both of these it was not. If there could be one criticism it would be the lack of suspense leading up to the unveiling, but other than that, nothing is at fault.

The girl Maryann (Natasha Calis) has just moved to the house of her Grandfather (Peter Fonda) and Grandmother (Leslie Lyles) in the countryside after losing her parents. She is lonely and misses her former friends and decides to wander around the area. She finds the secluded boy Andy (Charlie Tahan), who lives alone with his mother, the surgeon Dr. Katherine Young (Samantha Morton), and his father, the nurse Richard Young (Michael Shannon), in an isolated house. They immediately befriend each other and she enters in his room through the window to play video game with him since Andy depends on a wheelchair to locomote. On the next day, Maryann visits her new friend again and Richard let her in to play with Andy. On the next day, Katherine does not allow Maryann to visit her son and she goes to the house of her grandparents to forbid Maryann to visit her son. However Maryann insists on visiting Andy when his parents are absent; out of the blue, they return and Maryann is trapped inside the house. She goes to the basement expecting to find a way out and stumbles with a dark secret. What has Maryann discovered about Andy's creepy parents?

"The Harvest" is a great low-budget thriller with top-notch performances, highlighting Samantha Morton. The immediate impression is that there is a flaw when Maryann finds the truth and does not call the police. However, if she is not able to convince her grandparents, imagine the police department of a small town. The plot becomes predictable in a certain moment after the first plot point, but keeps the tension until the very end. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "A Ameaça" ("The Menace")

Adventurous girl befriends a dying boy and uncovers a dark secret.

This is carefully put together and well acted by the girl and boy. The obsessive mother looked like she was heading for Kathy Bates intensity, but I think the punches were pulled in the end.

Problem I had with this was it starts as a conventional family drama and only ups the stakes halfway through, and even then it never develops a sense of menace. It's as if they thought the plot reveal alone would elevate the story beyond the Nancy Drew level.

Also the pace is pedestrian. The director gets the technicals spot on, but I guess the screenplay didn't give enough to allow the tension to mount.

I am always more compelled when a story unfolds in an implicit fashion, as when John McNaughton's first feature film since 2001, The Harvest, opens on an incident that is not fully elucidated until several subsequent scenes contrast it with their own stakes and dimensions. We are kept in an ongoing state of anticipation by a patiently, implicitly unfolding story. Most movies feel more of a need to hit an overt, straightforward formula of beats, but what seasoned, patient filmmakers like John McNaughton are willing to hold out for is a contained, clear-cut storytelling style that slow-burns through on the way to pure and constant surprises.

Certain aspects of McNaughton's technique deliberately old-fashioned, and however that befits your tastes, it is that unhurried confidence that allows acutely poignant relationships to pop. There is something refreshingly and uncomfortably profound about the way the fearfully unpredictable Samantha Morton, as the mother of wheelchair-bound Andy, undermines his father, played with tangible vulnerability by gifted Steppenwolf alum Michael Shannon, her fears pushing her to antagonize those nearest and dearest, lashing out with keen cruelty to deflect her vulnerability, and tragically poisoning the already precarious atmosphere around her.

The Harvest, it should be made abundantly clear, is an acutely Midwestern film. You can feel it in its sentiment, in its traditional form, and in its piercing portrayal of awkward lulls and that apple pie sense of manners and politeness. Its center aim is on families and upbringing, and more specifically on the crippling feeling of being sheltered and living in a bubble. And as it unfolds into more psychotic territory, the more adult terror of being alone rears its ugly, ruining head.

Every viewer who grew up in Middle America had friends whose parents they despised. And we all remember the seemingly mortal fear of getting in trouble. The discomfort and suffering in this movie are palpable, owing to the powerfully subtle performances, the delicate direction and the knowing script, but also owing to its powerful sense of place. And when things take a harrowing turn, we're so engrossed that the tension never stops. And even at its most "sensational," it always keeps its feet on the ground dramatically.

I do love a good Michael Shannon film, if he wasn't in it, it wouldn't have caught my eye and I wouldn't have watched it. The mum also plays a crazy mum in the recent seasons of the walking dead and she plays it perfectly in this and that. I like the massive twist, if you've seen it you know what I'm talking about. The film isn't bad, it's nothing special but it's definitely not an L.