Excellent adaptation.

Crappy film

Awesome Movie

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

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.

A troubled father and son find themselves staying farm that was the site of the Garden of Eden, and their evil host wants them to repeat history's first mistake in this interesting misfire. I find myself in a bit of a quandary with movies like this. I have given worse films better reviews because of a varied level of expectation. If, for instance, "Dark Town," had the same production values and the level of acting talent on display in this film, I would have been thumbs-down on it. However, as it was, I recommend it on what it was able to accomplish on a shoestring. "The Garden" looks great and features real actors and therefore has to stand toe-to-toe with the "real" movies I see in the theater. Sadly, it falls short on that level. The main problem is the script. It is a very interesting idea, but the internal "theology" ultimately doesn't make sense and therefore it isn't especially compelling. For instance, how is Sean Young able to "call" the sword protecting the tree? Is the Apocalpyse a good thing meant to help man that Satan is trying to stop? Why would another human eating from the tree through the moral universe upside down? Those are just a fraction of the questions I had that the film left unanswered. I should perhaps congratulate the film for making me think, but, I think I would have preferred to be entertained instead. A little sharper writing would have made all of the difference.This is the third of the recent Stephen J. Cannell horror films which I have seen. (The other two being "Room 6" and "It Waits.") All three featured good production values, acting and make-up effects. Sadly, I didn't find any of the three particularly compelling. Hopefully that will change as Cannell continues to make these films. I admire the fact that he is attempting to tell interesting stories and not just offering up more blades and babes films. I am relieved that someone is trying to tell horror tales that someone over twenty can watch. He just needs more compelling stories. I hope he finds them.

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.

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.