Great Film overall

A Masterpiece!

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

A variation of 'Shadowbuilder' even including the eclipse. No priests though. A small boy battling Satan himself, even though he has faults/weaknesses. Like being considered psychotic because of his bad dreams and cutting. Daddy is failing alcoholic with tenuous parental bonds to the kid, until Satan compels him to beat the crap out of him with a belt. Satan beats the horse simultaneously, which is apparently evil enough to loose the zombies with lips sewed shut. Then the four horsemen show up but it's Sam who finishes the deal. If you come across Satan, it's prudent to somehow lose the body; otherwise they may charge you with something.

I totally agree with you about the production values. Some scenes were breathtaking, and the camera shots were very well done. Very interesting, visually. Nothing cheap or slipshod in the cinematography, that's for sure.The movie needed a better story, or a more clear story, or maybe some exposition scenes (the four horsemen, for example) should have been earlier in the movie.When you spend the first two-thirds of the movie wondering what's going on, it's easy to lose interest before you get it figured out.10 stars for the directing, editing, cinematography; 5 for the plot. It's worth a rental.

I saw this movie at the BIFFF (Brussels international festival of fantasy film) and found it struggling with it's plot material.A young boy suffers from nightmarish visions and as a result has a tendency to put his body full of razor cuts. The boy resides with his father who is recovering from alcoholism and fails to be of support for his troubled son.When father and son end up having a car accident caused by a vision the boy has, they get rescued by an elder man named Ben (Lance Henriksen).Ben has a spooky air around him; vanishing and appearing at random pace throughout his ranch, always the sharp answer or life lesson on his tongue.Ben has a weird agenda as he manipulates the father into alcoholism again and the boy into experiencing weird visions.The movie tries so hard to build up the Christian undertone (think tree of life, adam & eve, apocalypse themes) but fails at each occasion.The visions of the boy are the only up tempo sequences as the rest of the movie focuses on Lance Henriksen talking in Chinese fortune cookie lingo.A shame, because the production values are there, the star (Henriksen) is wasted with this kind of script and the editing tries to contrast every moment of suspense with random actions (like heating up a stove, cleaning a fish, ...) This is B-movie material, a rental for the Henriksen fans, others should wisely avoid.

First and foremost, it's a VERY bad idea to schedule a mainly story-driven and atmospheric horror movie like "The Garden" at 3am during a Film Festival and after exhilarating movies like "The Hills Have Eyes"-remake or "Neighborhood Watch"! The subject matter "The Garden" brings forward is interesting, but too abstract and definitely not compelling (let alone exciting) enough to keep you on the edge of your seat. A divorced father and his psychologically troubled son are involved in a car accident and recover at the house of a mysterious old man (Lance Henriksen in his umpteenth inferior horror role). The old guy's garden turns out to be the genuine Paradise of Eden; the place where our whole existence began according to the Holy Bible. Through the re-occurring nightmares of young Sam, the apocalypse can be inflicted in this exact same garden (don't ask me how as I somehow must have missed that part) and maybe that even is what the old man desires to achieve! Don Michael Paul's second film as a director starts out surprisingly stylish with elegant camera-work and a patient drawing of characters and settings. The first murder-sequence also comes at the exact right timing and it's quite bloody, especially considering the tone of the film so far. For reasons I fail to comprehend, "The Garden" then turns into a confusing and painfully dull mess that eventually reverts to annoying clichés and predictable plot twists. The only elements left to enjoy near the end are the creepy music and young Adam Taylor Gordon's impressive acting performance which easily surpasses the quality of his lines.