The Garden (2006)

An Exercise In Nonsense

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

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.

Beside good photography, the only other good thing about this movie was the skillful performance by veteran Lance Henriksen, (as old man Ben). Unfortunately, painfully, the other main characters seemed to have absolutely no sense of timing. This I attribute to directing/editing deficiencies. So many of the scenes are drawn out like taffy. Even parallel scenes belabor alternating imagery, least the audience miss the meaning of the juxtaposition I guess? Once the story got going I was optimistic that a provocative pay off was in store. Alas, it ended the way so many movies do, offering nothing more than borrowed meaning, delivering no message or perspective of their own.

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.

A Blockbuster rental, I chose it mainly because of the seasoned character actors in it.It was basically as I expected and the actors definitely made the movie better than the ancient story line would allow.A 'very special' boy named Sam (Adam Taylor Gordon) is struggling with his parents divorce due to his father's alcoholism and other issues not apparent. This pushes Sam to self mutilate, but it seemed that there was more to Sam's self mutilation than just the divorce.Sam's father David (Brian Wimmer) takes Sam traveling during his summer with the boy and they have a car accident caused by Sam's hallucinations, seemingly brought about by the will of Ben (Lance Henrikson) close to Ben's remote country home. Ben nurses them both back to health, but David is taken in by Ben's logical approach to life's problems and agrees to stay with Ben as a handy man until they can afford to leave. Sam and Ben never hit it off as Sam detects something odd in Ben's outlook on life and the continued hallucinations make life with Ben uncomfortable.As the weak father turns to self indulgence with the urging of Ben, Sam gains strength from the other key mother figures to forgive and protect his father from whatever Ben has planned for them.The plot is very simple. The struggle of good and evil people constantly battle within themselves and how blind faith can simplify life's decisions when people are guided through life's choices by logical (but evil) arguments they are ill equipped to refute.If you don't have a very good background in Christianity/Judaism you will not understand the high degree of symbolism, and the movie will seem very heavily edited. I can see it being a cultural classic for the evangelical crowd.