The Kirlian Witness

Another movie that flew under the radar and received little or no recognition.This film tells the story of a pretty young photographer who uses a special kind of photography to communicate with her plants an solve the murder of her sister. This is a low budget and dimly lit production that moves at a slow pace taking the time to help you get into the subject matter and help to buy and accept the premise so you should be patient and stay with it. The film does not totally endorse this method of crime solving because she has to ,in a way, cover her tracks. So,all in all this film is an interesting change of pace of the endless shootemups because it contains minimal violence and a real feel for city life and alternative solutions

The world of horror/occult cinema is a wonderfully unpredictable place. I have been a horror fanatic for almost my entire life and I daresay that I have seen practically everything. I saw cannibal tribes devouring innocent people, serial killers painfully tormenting their agonizing victims and even I even watched babies getting impaled on spikes. None of these sights ever shocked or frightened me, though, but the simple alternate title and poster image of this obscure & low-budgeted thriller, I find strangely unnerving and eerie. "The Plants are Watching", and then the image of a tipped over plant next to the lifeless hand of a woman. You must admit that is somewhat uncanny, no? Well, I certainly think so.

"The Kirlian Witness", which is the official title, also brings forward some very original and intriguing themes but - unfortunately - it's too much of a poorly produced and amateurish effort to be entertaining. With better production values and slightly more competent cast & crew members, I'm sure this could have been a modest cult gem, but now it's destined to remain an obscure oddity for avid collectors. The idea of communicating with plants, and even depend on them as witnesses of vile crimes like murder, may sound foolish but actually it's quite compelling and suspenseful (given that the screenplay is better elaborated than here). Laurie is an introvert girl, obsessed with botanical flora and persuaded it's possible to telepathically communicate with plants. She's found murdered on the rooftop of her apartment complex one day, and since writer/director Jonathan Sarno could only afford Lawrence Tierney one single day for a cameo appearance as the Police Detective, it's up to Laurie's sister Rilla to identify the killer herself. Since there are only two main suspects, and one of them obviously did not do it, the script isn't exactly compelling or exciting. In fact, "The Kirlian Witness" is a painfully tedious film that only exists of lame conversations between 3 terrible actors and an endless amount of shots of Sansevierias hooked onto seismograph devices. There's one moment of spectacle, when someone makes a nasty fall down an elevator shaft, but that's also over in the blink of an eye. I'm giving it a generous rating 4/10, because I still very much like the main idea and because of the little shiver the title gave me, but it sadly can't be recommended.

When a woman claiming to possess an unearthly connection to plant-life dies mysteriously, her sister, compelled to put to rest unanswered questions in the matter, begins an investigation of plant/human communication phenomena. Her shocking conclusion is that her sister's beloved houseplants are not only cogent key-witnesses to a murder, but they may also be attempting to warn her that she is in similar danger.

Despite some pardonable issues with seesaw pacing, this refreshingly original indie thiller intrigues with its open-minded and ineffably eccentric concept. Honorable performances and a nail-biting windup make this low-budget effort a most enjoyable surprise...possibly not so easy to attain, but worth tracking down.

6/10

Sort of a murder mystery with a weird thread running through it all - "plant communication," "kirlian photography," and to a much lesser degree: auras, meditation, "pyramid power" etc. The musical score is good, the acting decent, the story OK. This could have been more interesting and engaging, and is the sort of movie which could perhaps benefit from a remake.

Oh - and there's nothing involving dogs, spatulas, or warnings against going in the water, as another user wrote - perhaps he was thinking of another movie.

The deadeningly slow pace is what ruins this picture. A woman whose sister was murdered uses kirlian photography to try and solve the crime. An interesting idea but a livelier script was needed. Lawrence Tierney has a brief cameo.