Garden, The
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   128 of 265 readers found this review helpful.

What would you do if you had the garden of Eden in your back yard? Would you enter a green thumb gardening contest? I'd have to think something like that could beat ole' Miss Watson's lilies. Now THE GARDEN does reference the garden of Eden. I hate to say though, I've grown a better flower out of a mason jar in science class than this so called "garden". It's nothing but a crusty old tree with a piece of fruit on it. That's it. Under whelmed was I. Not only with the look of the garden, but with the movie as a whole.

Now the movie starts with a child Sam (best actor in the movie Adam Taylor Gordon) that has visions and likes to cut himself. In many of his visions is an old tree. Spooky. The child's father takes his son out of the hospital and promises a great time with his mom. While heading home however, the kid has a vision and causes his dad to swerve off the road and wreck the car.

When the kid finally awakes he sees that they are at an old man's house. Seems good ole' Ben (Lance Henriksen phoning it in) helped them out and even offered Sam's worthless ex-alcoholic dad a job. Now Sam doesn't really trust Ben too much. With the creepy visions that Sam has while at Ben's house, and the fact that Ben seems to be turning his dad down a path of booze and easy women, and also the fact that he sees Ben kill a person....you get the point. Turns out that the good old Ben is really bad old Scratch himself and is guarding the Tree of Life for a worthless person like Sam's dad to come along and eat from it. If he does then he can reverse the apocalypse. Huh? Wouldn't that be a good thing? Don't know. It's up to Sam to decipher Ben's Confucius-like ramblings and try to save his dad while defeating the devil.

Now in all reality this movie started out quite suspenseful. The camera work is great, and the look of the film was very impressive. Also you knew that Ben was evil just by listening to him talk, but you couldn't put your finger on why. Even when Ben makes his first kill it had a nice look to it, and you wanted to know more. Soon though when the answers are given it takes a twist into the most absurd, after school special, veggie-tale feeling movie that disappointed the hell out of me.

Seeing Sam riding along with the four horsemen of the Apocalypse was completely idiotic, and the weakness that was his worthless dad just added to the lunacy. With all this going on why doesn't Sam just leave with his dad? Well, turns out that the ranch that they call home is quarantined. What? Yep, that's right. They can't leave Bens house yet because their place is quarantined. Good lord.

I forgot to mention that Sean Young is in this. Oh, the sultry Sean Young. Well, her role was even more absurd and pointless than some of the previously mentioned characters. Overall this movie is bad. What starts out as a suspenseful film quickly spirals downhill into a film of no suspense, incoherent plot lines, and some ridiculously stupid dialogue. The only saving grace from this movie was young Adam Taylor Gordon, some impressive make-up effects involving Sam's visions, and a sharp picture quality. While that is not enough for me to recommend the movie, it is enough to keep me from weeding this garden completely. Nice huh? At the end of the film all I could say is that it wasn't the worst I've seen, and while showing promise at the start, quickly became a film that I will easily forget about.

Added:  Thursday, July 13, 2006

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