Rating: C
Dir: Mark Wolfe, Kerry McArthur
Star: Lucas Szuch, Kate Webb, Hubert Brandys, Mark Pritchard
For various reasons, this film was shot over parts of four years, and to be blunt, it shows. Not so much in terms of continuity, where it seems fine (not that I tend to notice such things). It’s more that the movie feels as if it went through several iterations during the process, with the focus changing to different elements over time. The end result nods towards each of these elements, without quite managing to do any of them proper justice. The main character is Lucas Bauer (Szuch), who returns to his small-town origins with girlfriend Kate (Webb), years after he lost his family in a car accident.
The lure is inheriting his late grandfather’s cherry orchard, which has a growing reputation worldwide. Now, Lucas knows little to nothing about arboriculture, and has psychological issues which require pharmaceutical treatment. There’s a bit of mystery surrounding his grandfather’s death, and matters aren’t helped when Lucas lops off a finger while attempting to prune a tree – he swears the tree “bit” him. This leads to further self-medication, and the increasing concern of Kate, who is reluctant to tell him that’s she’s expecting their child. Lucas falls back in alongside some old friends with bad habits, and he becomes convinced the key to the success of his new farming endeavour is a very special organic nutrient, if you catch my drift. Delusion? Drugs? Or something sinister?
Well, don’t expect to get any definitive answers from the movie. It operates in a realm where we occupy Lucas’s point of view, yet there’s a strong suggestion he’s an unreliable narrator, for a slew of reasons. I think the makers would have been better off committing to one side or the other. Is this a vampiric cherry orchard, beyond the nightmares of Russian playwrights? Or is Lucas’s sanity so much home-made jam? It’s not quite one thing or the other, and ends up a bit flat as a result. The same goes for the drama, which feels like it kinda wants to be a domestic drama, kinda wants to be a report on the opioid crisis in small-town communities, and kinda wants to be Jean de Florette while it’s at it.
Probably unsurprisingly, it isn’t able to pull this all together. You’re left with a film where individual scenes work well enough, yet it never pulls the various strands together into a compelling whole. I’d like, for example, to have seem some local lore providing a rational for what’s otherwise entirely random fruit-related horror. Similarly, more about Lucas’s back story would have helped: there’s a scene where Kate explains to friends what happened, and their reaction to the horrific news is simply to drink. I couldn’t really blame them. As a first feature for Wolfe and McArthur, I’ve certainly seen worse, yet there’s a good deal of room for improvement.
The film is available to rent/buy on Amazon Prime Video in the UK and USA, on other streaming platforms worldwide including Tubi, and on region-free Blu-ray in the USA.