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Moon Garden

by Hope Madden

If you are looking for a wondrously macabre fairy tale, a nightmare that’s both fanciful and terrifying, writer/director Ryan Stevens Harris has a tale to tell.

Moon Garden delivers a journey through the fertile imagination of 5-year-old Emma (Haven Lee Harris). We know from Act 1 that she funnels what she picks up from the world around her into delightfully odd, even spooky fantasies for her toys to act out. So, when trouble that’s been brewing at home (and spilling into Emma’s playtime fantasies) unexpectedly puts the tot in a coma, that fantasy world drowns out reality and Emma finds herself on a very big journey indeed.

Of its many successes Moon Garden can boast set design, creature design and stop motion work at the top. All are very solid, and all collaborate to evoke a big, dark, scary world where logic bends but wonder never dies.

Creature design – particularly the first creature – lives up to the expectations set early when we see Emma’s toys. And the film benefits immeasurably from a charming and believable central performance by young Harris. Excellent editing helps to make her physical journey seem more plausible, but her laughter and tears never feel less than genuine.

Augie Duke, playing Emma’s distraught mother, and Brionne Davis as Dad Alex are less impressive, although it may be that the artistic vision is so much stronger in the fantastical storyline that the real-world of the parents received short shrift.

Other characters glimpsed briefly within the otherworldly realm are more compelling, aided by stagey old school costuming. Wisely, the filmmaker blurs lines between good and evil, giving the story itself a kind of fluidity that feels appropriate to a dreamscape and also keeps you constantly surprised.

The story, and to a degree the entire film, is hokey but Moon Garden generates more than enough of the macabre in old school fairy tales to evoke a wondrous nightmare energy.

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6:45

by Rachel Willis

Working from a screenplay by Robert Dean Klein, director Craig Singer brings us the time loop horror film, 6:45.

Bobby (Michael Reed) and Jules (Augie Duke) are trying to work through some issues, so they visit the quaint island of Bog Grove for a relaxing vacation. What the couple doesn’t know is that their visit to the island falls on the anniversary of a traumatic, unsolved murder. Because of this, the ferry service doesn’t run, and they’re stuck – or so they’re informed by the nosy, odd proprietor for the inn where they’re staying.

A slow opening that follows the couple exploring Bog Grove, its tourist shops and oddball residents, doesn’t take advantage of the opportunity to build tension. When the tragedy occurs, it comes as a relief rather than a shock.

Soon, Bobby descends into a nightmare he must relive over and over. Being forced to relive the day alongside Bobby is a horror in itself.

No one else experiences the loop, so we get to see Duke in a range of roles: some days she wishes could last forever, others see her trying to rein in an increasingly unstable boyfriend. Reed, on the other hand, is stuck playing a man who doesn’t seem to know how to handle himself each day. Every time the crucial event occurs, he seems constantly taken by surprise.

The cast of locals has little to do, often repeating lines from previous loops. They fill mostly stereotypical roles: small-town friendly and welcoming or weirdly creepy. There isn’t middle ground, and it makes for uninteresting characters.   

Rather than differentiate itself from similar time loop films through storytelling, 6:45 instead focuses on camerawork and distracting split screens. Anywhere from four to six screens will litter the frame, some focusing on banal details, others on more interesting visuals. Days are relegated to montages,

Flashbacks detailing the couple’s history sometimes punctuate the flashbacks. It’s here that Singer cleverly injects moments that help us understand why the couple has been fighting. It’s clear that the fight revolves around infidelity, but these fleeting moments offer hints of violence, which reveals something more sinister.

The film does take an interesting turn, but it comes too little, too late. It also fumbles any message it’s trying to get across. Instead of offering a strong look at a troublesome relationship, it embraces shock over commentary. In the end, we’re not shown anything new or astute.