Elizabeth Harvest

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Movie
German title Elizabeth Harvest
Original title Elizabeth Harvest
Country of production United States
United Kingdom
original language English
Publishing year 2018
length 105 minutes
Rod
Director Sebastian Gutierrez
script Sebastian Gutierrez
production Sebastian Gutierrez
music Faris Badwan
Rachel Zeffira
camera Cale Finot
cut Matt Mayer
occupation

Elizabeth Harvest is an American-British science fiction psychological thriller from 2018. The director is the Venezuelan Sebastian Gutierrez , who, like most of his films, also wrote the screenplay.

action

The rich and brilliant Nobel Prize- winning scientist Henry drives his new, significantly younger wife, Elizabeth, to his remote, high-tech protected mansion in the mountains. There he introduces her to the housekeeper Claire and the blind Oliver, who make up the entire staff of the huge house. He shows Elizabeth the entire house with the exception of one room and makes her promise that she will never enter that room. One night Henry is away on business and Elizabeth takes the opportunity to visit the forbidden room. It's a research lab where she discovers a clone of herself. She tries to keep her discovery a secret from Henry, but Henry discovers her betrayal and kills her. Together with Claire and Oliver, he buries the body on the property of the villa.

Six weeks later, Henry drives his new, much younger wife Elizabeth to his villa, introduces her to Claire and Oliver, shows her the house and forbids her to enter the forbidden room. Little by little, it becomes clear to the viewer that Henry once lost his beloved wife Elizabeth to a fatal illness and has since been working on creating a clone. Claire is also a scientist and supports Henry in his research, Oliver is Henry's son. The second Elizabeth also sneaks into the forbidden room and discovers another clone of herself. Henry again finds out about her and tries to kill her, but Elizabeth is able to fight off him and stab him in self-defense. When Claire learns of Henry's death, she has a heart attack and is taken to the hospital. Oliver helps Elizabeth clean up Henry's body.

Oliver pretends to want to help Elizabeth, but prevents her from leaving the house several times and finally locks her up. He forces her to read Claire's diary, with whom he is secretly in love, in order to get information about Claire's relationship with him and Henry. The diary reveals that Henry made a total of six clones from the cells of his late wife and that Claire and Henry's experiments were initially problematic; the first clones did not allow memory planting to work, and they died after a short time. With increasing success in editing the clones, Henry's perspective on the experiment changed: his focus shifted to reliving the wedding night with Elizabeth; a subsequent killing of the clone meant nothing to him, as he saw more and more non-human beings in the Elizabeths. In order not to lose Claire for his research, he blackmailed her with the joint, illegal experiments and gave her his house in the event of his death. Elizabeth also learns while reading that Claire had a long-running affair with Henry and that Oliver is not Henry's son, but his clone. Oliver also claims he was not always blind, but was blinded after watching a romantic scene between Henry and a previous clone of Elizabeth, which was later passed off as an accident.

Now chained in her bedroom, Elizabeth can overpower Oliver with a pair of scissors and break free of her chains. At that moment, the sixth and final clone of her appears with a rifle. The confused girl shoots and kills Oliver and her likeness. After the last remaining Elizabeth has also read the diary, she gives it to Claire, who is returning from the hospital, and sets off into a life outside the villa.

History of origin

Sebastian Gutierrez carried the idea of ​​the film around with him for over ten years, but for a long time couldn't find any financiers for the project. He turned down offers to turn the film into a conventional horror film with just one clone. According to Gutierrez, the success of the 2015 film Ex Machina , which is set in a similar setting, finally found funders for his project. In an interview, Gutierrez stated that the dynamics and atmosphere of the film were influenced by the work of the Italian horror film director Dario Argento . The film was shot in Colombia for budget reasons . The concise, modernist villa in which the entire film takes place is in the mountains above Bogotá . The interiors that can be seen in the film are not all in this villa, but partly in two other houses in which the film was shot. The film team used certain colors to illuminate individual scenes so as not to lose track of which clone was acting out of which mood. Leading actress Abbey Lee did a minor part of the script by working out the character background of Henry's original wife. The film was shot in 26 working days.

The film had its premiere on March 10th, 2018 at the South-by-Southwest -Filmfestival 2018. It was released in the USA on August 10th, 2018. In Germany, the film was shown at the Fantasy Filmfest 2018 .

Carla Gugino , who plays Claire, has been in a relationship with director Gutierrez since 2005 and stars in most of his films. Cinematographer Cale Finot is also a regular contributor to Gutierrez's films. At the time of shooting, Abbey Lee was primarily known for her work as a model , but had also worked in films such as Mad Max: Fury Road or the Stephen King film adaptation of The Dark Tower .

reception

Elizabeth Harvest received very mixed reviews. The review database Rotten Tomatoes aggregates 12 reviews to a rating of 50%, Metacritic aggregates 10 ratings to a score of 54. Several reviews point to similarities to the French fairy tale Bluebeard from the late 17th century and to the film adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's novel Rebecca . Gutierrez himself claims to have been fascinated by the Bluebeard plot since childhood .

The US trade journal Variety points out that the film begins very conventionally, but with the first twist after about ten minutes it takes a completely different direction and, through the complex flashbacks and the non-linear narrative style, develops into a large and artistic deception of the viewer . Reviewer Joe Leydon positively highlighted the work of cameraman Finot, who moves purposefully between "futuristic sterility and rococo stylization". The New York Times gave the film a class of style, manifested in the decoration and lighting as well as tense split-screen sequences in the style of Brian de Palma . Reviewer Ben Kenigsberg criticized the fact that the regular plot turns devalued the film as a whole, since the individual phases followed conventional rules and the overall product was not surprising. The New Yorker describes Elizabeth Harvest as a "peculiar mixture of fairy tale and feverish dream", which makes less and less sense as the plot progresses, but has style at a consistently high level.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ HollywoodReporter.com: 'Elizabeth Harvest' Director on the Struggle to Get It Made. Retrieved September 15, 2018 .
  2. ↑ a b ForrorFuel.com: Sebastian Gutierrez Tells Us About 'Elizabeth Harvest' And More In An Interview. Retrieved September 15, 2018 .
  3. ↑ DenofGeek.com: Elizabeth Harvest Mixes Gothic Horror with Modern Sci-Fi. Retrieved September 15, 2018 .
  4. ↑ FilmSchoolRejects.com: Creating a House of Horrors with 'Elizabeth Harvest' Director Sebastian Gutierrez. Retrieved September 15, 2018 .
  5. ↑ Vulture.com: Abbey Lee: 'I'm Very Passionate, and I Can Become Very Enraged'. Retrieved September 15, 2018 .
  6. ↑ BritishCouncil.org: Elizabeth Harvest. Retrieved September 15, 2018 .
  7. ^ RottenTomatoes.com: Elizabeth Harvest. Retrieved September 15, 2018 .
  8. ^ Metacritic.com: Elizabeth Harvest. Retrieved September 15, 2018 .
  9. ↑ Variety.com: SXSW Film Review: 'Elizabeth Harvest'. Retrieved September 15, 2018 .
  10. ↑ NYTimes.com: Review: In 'Elizabeth Harvest,' Forbidden Rooms and Stylized Mystery. Retrieved September 15, 2018 .
  11. ^ NewYorker.com: Elizabeth Harvest. Retrieved September 15, 2018 .