Harvest Lake

Have you ever watched a movie and asked yourself what was the point? Please don't waste your time watching this movie. 2 hours of my life I cannot get back. It was like watching a porno, but its background story wasn't as good... and it wasn't a porno. IMDb 5 lines of required review text, is too much to ask for this movie.

Labeled by some as a horror movie but this isn't such. It is more of a mystery type alien film. It starts off relatively okay as the characters are introduced but with its low budget and bland storytelling, the film doesn't offer much or exactly go anywhere.

Then within the final 20 or so minutes it becomes further away as we see these alien type wood creatures. Apparently the people drank some potion type that makes them possessed with those creatures. The film doesn't exactly lead anywhere after that as it is quite short in runtime. Ellie Church is one of the highlights, otherwise this film is a waste.

This is not a horror movie. I repeat: this is in no way a horror movie. The only good thing I can say about this movie is the opening scene with the bleached blonde getting entirely butt naked. That's the only noteworthy thing about this movie. I think the director put that scene in there to keep the audience interested. Otherwise, I would have turned it off within 20 minutes. Yes, it was so boring, without the opening nude scene, I'm positive I would have stopped watching 20 minutes in.

At the 30 minute mark, I realized I hadn't seen anything, not one thing, remotely horror related: no suspenseful music, no tense atmosphere, no villain, no one getting killed or disappearing, no blood, no screaming, no running in fear, no victims, nothing, absolutely nothing horror related. I didn't turn off the movie, but I fast-forwarded. I fast-forwarded to the end and still saw nothing horror related. None of the horror elements I mentioned above showed up in the movie at all.

As a result, this movie is mislabeled as a horror. It's a drama fantasy. So if you've been mislead into believing this is a horror movie, either psychological suspense horror with little or no violence, or a gore/exploitation horror, or any other kind of horror, you'll find no horror here. At all.

As far as being a good drama/fantasy goes, it's not. The only thing horror related about this movie is the typical horror plot: unsuspecting young people spend a weekend in a secluded rural area with no cell phone reception so they can have fun with booze, weed, and free sex. The acting is mediocre, at best. The director is flat and uninspired. The cinematography is dull and unimpressive. The dialogue is pathetic (Characters say stuff such as, "Like totally whatever, cakeboy"). And the story is all over the place and nonsensical. Instead of the token black character, we have the token gay character. So there is some heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual sex going on in the movie.

All in all, it is mislabeled as a horror movie. There is nothing horror related in this movie at all. It's a drama/fantasy. But as a drama/fantasy, it fails for all the reasons I described above. Don't bother unless you like wasting your time watching amateur cinema.

A slow-moving, low-budget, erotic, Lovecraftian independent horror with arthouse pretensions, Harvest Lake is set in and around a still body of water deep in the woods, the perfect setting for eerie otherworldly action. Into this remote locale comes one young couple, Ben and Cat (Dan Nye and Tristan Risk), Cat's best friend Jennifer (Ellie Church), and Jennifer's gay pal Josh (Jason Crowe), who are spending the weekend partying together in a cabin. Joining in with the fun is Mark (Kevin Roach), a stranger that Cat met on the way to the cabin. As the friends relax and enjoy themselves, a strange supernatural presence slowly affects their behaviour, increasing their libidos and reducing their inhibitions.

While Harvest Lake is a technically well-made movie, with impressive cinematography, a brooding atmosphere and reasonable performances, it's hard to see who it is going to appeal to: if you're heterosexual, then the gay stuff can be disconcerting; similarly, if you're gay, then the straight sex will probably be a turn off; and if you're a horror fan looking to be scared or disturbed, then the lack of anything remotely scary or disturbing will prove very frustrating. Much of the film consists of scenes wherein the characters wander aimlessly round the woods or talk about sex, all of which is fairly dull. The ending, which fails to adequately explain matters, sees the friends encountering (and having sex with) a one-eyed creature that looks like a reject from Doctor Who circa the late-'70s, only with more goop, orifices, and protuberances.

2.5 out of 10, generously rounded up to 3 for blonde babe Ellie Church, who deserves better.

It was the synopsis of the movie and the fact that it was labeled as a horror movie that initially caught my attention. It seemed like the movie could have potential to be something interesting. It turned out that the keywords here were "could have"...

"Harvest Lake" turned out to be a sleazefest dressed in a horror wrapping. There was so much pointless nudity and focus on sex acts that the movie was almost a softcore porn flick. It was just too much, and director and writer Scott Schirmer could have opted for a much more neutral approach and a more subtle sexual approach, which would have proved for a much more adequate movie.

The acting in the movie was good, especially taking into consideration that the acting talents had very little to work with in terms of script and story.

The storyline, however, was every bit as mundane as it was generic and predictable. Actually, I will go as far as to claiming that the storylien was sort of pointless, because all that this movie was about was showing sexual depravity instilled upon the minds of the young people by the otherworldly being in the forest.

"Harvest Lake" had adequate special effects, mind you that there wasn't a lot of special effects. The creature in the forest was sort of interesting, but it was marred by having a very low budget appearance to it. So a few more dollars thrown after the special effects department would have done wonders for the movie.

What was the toughest part of the movie to get through was the incredibly slow pace that the storyline was presented in. It just trotted on in a very monotonous pace that really had no ups or downs.

I managed to sit through "Harvest Lake" to the very end, but I found my focus, attention and interest in the movie hard pressed many times throughout the course of the movie. I was hoping that the movie would pick up and become better as it went along, but that hope was in vain. My rating of "Harvest Lake" ends on a generous 3 out of 10 stars.