The Garden

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.

You don't have to have big budget production and CGI FX coiling out the rear to make a great movie, and movies like this proves it so.

The movie is basically about a problem young boy named Sam as in Samuel as in 'Judgement of God', turning his vices then into virtues within himself.

It has to do with the imperfections of his father and the trials that he has to overcome within himself once he's found a cause (the love for his father)to come out majestically to defeat the devil's plan to reverse the apocalypse.

Lawrence Hendrickson (who's a great actor) plays an excellent devil. He's odd, but old, he's calm but cunning but for the most part, subtle in his plans and not fire blazing like Al Pacino's portrayal (btw, The Devils' Advocate was an excellent film in its own rite).

The movie is very symbolic in a lot of ways, bloody at times, and a lot of one eyed, lip sewn shut specters, flaming swords, and horses.

The movie do kind of get's annoying with the ghosts whispering his name but plays out in the end for me. All in all, the plot isn't very complex but original and played out well.

I suggest you go to your local crap-buster's and rent a copy and judge for yourself.

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.

In my opinion, this film was innovative and compelling yet at the same time it slightly lacked the ability to grip me as a spectator. Mind you, I watched the entire film and thought it was a good concept. The metaphor of the fathers drink addiction and his temptation for the devils urges was very well done. Adam Taylor Gordans superb acting performance was very well needed in this film. The ending was perhaps a little confusing, but, who knows, perhaps it was the best ending possible.

Storyline - 8/10, acting - 8/10, Cinematography - 8/10

I rate this film overall 8/10.

I recommend this film to anybody who's a fan of the genre, even though the genre escapes me right now. Try not to get confused by the plot like I slightly did.

When I sat down to watch the 2006 supernatural thriller "The Garden" here in 2022, it was without ever having heard about the movie. I stumbled upon the movie by random luck and saw that Lance Henriksen was on the cover. So of course I opted to sit down and watch what writer Samuel Vartek and director Don Michael Paul had to offer here.

The storyline, as written by Samuel Vartek, was fair enough. I mean, the story was well-enough paced, but the script did suffer from being somewhat generic and overly predictable. And sadly so, then there wasn't any surprises or any major ups and down throughout the course of the 92 minutes that the movie ran for. Don't get me wrong here, because "The Garden" is not a bad movie, it was just not an outstanding movie.

The acting performances in the movie were good, and I liked that they had cast Lance Henriksen for that particular role, especially since he was rather nicely cast for that role and pulled it off quite entertaining. I wasn't particularly familiar with the cast ensemble here, aside from Lance Henriksen, and I do believe that I might have seen Claudia Christian in a movie or two somewhere.

Visually then "The Garden" was okay. This wasn't a movie that was working heavy on the special effects, and the ones that were in the movie played out well enough.

There is a really good atmosphere in the movie, and that definitely helps to drive the movie forward.

My rating of "The Garden" lands on a five out of ten stars.