People Garden, The (2016)
Matt Boiselle
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Starring Dree Hemingway, Jai Tatsuo West, Pamela Anderson
Directed by Nadia Litz
In the overall scheme of things, when it comes to Nadia Litz’s brooding horror flick The People Garden, it’s the intention of what’s going on that will bring eyes to the screen. The end result? That’s a different story altogether.
Sweet Pea (Hemingway) is a young woman who is making the leap on over to Japan to give her rock star boyfriend, Jamie (Francois Arnaud), the old heave-ho while he’s on a music video shoot. (Couldn’t a text have saved you some time and money till he got back?) As she waits for him to pick her up at the airport, it’s plain to see that he’s not showing up, so she snags a ride with a quiet fellow by the name of Mak (West), who reluctantly drives her to the edge of the woods where the shoot is taking place.
Here’s the interesting hook: Mak will not enter the woods, and the other people involved with the music video, such as the director (James LeGros) and its star, Signe (Pamela Anderson), know Jamie’s missing, yet don’t seem terribly fazed by it. Now we all know what’s going on here, but it felt like we were being led down a path that everyone’s taken before (suicide forest movies) but are supposed to think that this is something refreshing and new… not quite. It’s not exactly implied that this particular forest is the one in Japan known as Aokigahara, or The Sea of Trees, but you catch what the director is tossing your way really fast if your mind is working on the upside of things.
Sweet Pea and Mak form somewhat of an unlikely partnership in her futile quest to locate her soon-to-be-ex, and while all the signs seem to point towards the depressing end of it all, I sat and watched and waited for the conclusion to bring both Sweet Pea (and myself) some sort of unrewarding closure. Hemingway is interesting in her role as the at times thick-skinned female lead, and she switches gears nicely when it comes time to show some heartfelt emotion. However, for the life of me I could NOT figure out what the deal was with Pamela Anderson’s role – playing a past her prime music video object, she seemed to simply whisper out one-line issuances without a shred of responsiveness or, hell, even a pulse! Very odd choice for the role, but it worked for the story, so I won’t complain too much.
What also works here is the cinematography – the endless shots inside the forest are simply amazing to take in, and you lose yourself in its grandeur and want to not think that this is an evil place… or is it?
As this review draws to a close, I’ve got to honestly say that I was slightly disappointed in the overall product of The People Garden – it’s like a front row seat for a trip down a one-way street: You know it’s going to end somewhere, but you just hope that the scenery changes along the way. A one-time watch if you have the unrelenting urge to depress your mood over the course of 80 minutes.
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Film
Categorized:Reviews
