The Harvest

Perhaps the melding of contemporary family drama and old fashioned B grade horror looked temptingly credible on paper but director John McNaughton (his best known films are Wild Things,1998, and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, 1986 leaves a yawning chasm between the story’s everyday setting and the near ludicrous plot.

Samantha Morton and Michael Shannon play Katherine and Richard, a couple who home-care their seriously invalided son, Andy (Charlie Tahan). One day a recently orphaned young girl. Maryann (Natasha Calis), comes to live next door with her grandparents (Peter Fonda and Leslie Lyles) and she and Andy strike up a friendship. Katherine’s hostility to Maryann only strengthens her determination to befriend the boy.  

Initially our concerns are relatively minor – Maryann seems to do little more than walk across the adjoining properties and she and Andy are firm friends. We get that Katherine is a control freak desperately concerned about her son but why does she reject what one would presume she would see as a good thing, a friend for him? About one third into the story we get a plot twist that supplies the answer to this question but this is also where the real problems begin.  

It has been established that Katherine is a doctor (and that, conveniently enough, Richard is a nurse) but not only are they getting black market medicine from a surprisingly lubricious drug company rep (Meadow Williams) but they have a hospital grade set-up in their basement that enables Katherine to do major transplant surgery. Katharine is clearly loopy but why we ask ourselves does the level-headed Richard go along with her crazed plan?  Everything ends more as less as you would expect it with a happy inter-generational family coda that leaves us wondering how exactly Andy had been kept wheel-chair bound his entire life and can trauma of such an order really be swept aside so easily. 

As Andy, Tahan does a very good job of playing an invalid and Morton likewise as the Mom-from-Hell (somewhat reminiscent of Piper Laurie’s performance in the 1972 classic teen horror, Carrie). Calis is less convincing but perhaps that is because she has little to work with whilst Shannon plays his part characteristically tight-lipped.

Had this been played for its schlock horror potential this might have worked for an audience with an appetite for such things. As it is it is too low-key for that demographic, too unconvincing for a more discerning audience.

 

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