One of the few actors whose name alone will spark our interest in a film, Michael Shannon will be seen later this year in 99 Homes and Midnight Special, but before that, his horror thriller The Harvest will arrive. Hitting the festival circuit back in 2013, it marks the first film in well over a decade from John McNaughton, who gave us the cult hit Wild Things. The story follows Shannon and Samantha Morton as a couple who have some secrets to hide when it comes to their son.
We said in our review, “I can see why director John McNaughton chose Stephen Lancellotti‘s script The Harvest to be his first feature length film in thirteen years, but I’m not sure it was worth the effort. There are some cool aspects to the horror thriller that may have worked better if its 104-minute runtime didn’t tick along at a snail’s pace—a shortcoming I guess he has no one to blame but himself. A lot of questions are posed, crazy becomes crazy about halfway through with a genuinely startling revelation, and yet in the end the resolution comes off as more of a “duh” than “huh.” But the biggest disappointment of all comes from realizing Michael Shannon isn’t the one flying off the handle. That’s not to say Samantha Morton wasn’t up to the task, he simply carries those expectations like a badge of honor.”
Courtesy of Collider, check out the trailer and poster below.
In his first film in nearly 15 years, the director of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer harks back to the depravity that made his 1986 debut a horror milestone. But less based in reality, The Harvest is closer to a fairy tale from Grimm’s darkest corners. Maryann (Natasha Calis) moves in with her grandparents after she’s orphaned. Desperately lonely, the preteen sets out to befriend a neighboring deathly ill, bed-ridden boy (Charlie Tahan), despite the outright disapproval of his mother (Samantha Morton). Maryann’s persistence pays off, however, and during a series of secret visits she gradually uncovers some seriously sinister goings-on in the house… Morton as the boy’s overprotective surgeon mom is the stuff of great screen villainy—at once utterly monstrous and tragically desperate—so much so that she makes even frequent heavy Michael Shannon, as the more subdued dad, pale in comparison.
The Harvest opens on April 10th in VOD and in theaters.