Elizabeth Harvest (2018) | 31 Days of Horror: Oct 4

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Quite a lovely crop this season.

Elizabeth Harvest is not your typical horror film. It has a decided sci-fi bent that plays out against misogynistic overtones and fantasies of entitlement. This film feels like a reaction to the social and political news stories of the mid 2010s, but with a twist.

Before Viewing

The trailer for Elizabeth Harvest offers up an interesting mystery. A young woman has just wed an older man, who returns with her to his isolated estate. She is told that everything is hers, except for whatever is inside the mysterious room. Of course, she goes into the room while he’s asleep! What does she find? And what mysteries about her life are being kept from her?

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

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After Viewing

An older man, Henry Kellenberg (Ciarán Hinds) returns to his techno-modern house with his young bride, Elizabeth (Abbey Lee). He introduces her to Claire (Carla Gugino) and Oliver (Matthew Beard), the apparent help, even though Oliver is blind. The next morning, Henry shows her around the opulent estate, which contains closets full of clothes, art rooms, a library and a room that is off limits. He tells her that everything, the money, the art, the jewels, is hers–and she needs to promise not to go into this room.

The next day Henry apologizes for having to go into work on their honeymoon. This allows Elizabeth to explore the house a little more on her own. As the sun sets she notices Claire and Oliver leaving the estate in the dark. Claire glances back up at her, and Elizabeth tries to hide that she was watching them. She decides to enter the room, which contains much high-tech equipment. Opening a drawer along the back wall, a tank slides out which contains a body in it, which Elizabeth recognizes as herself! Startled, she races out of the room and goes back to bed.

The next morning Henry senses something is off with Elizabeth. As he questions her more he concludes that she did enter the forbidden room. He grabs a large machete and chases her around the house, before slaughtering her in the den. Claire and Oliver help him bury the body in the garden. At their meal, Claire calmly thinks that Henry has gone too far, while Oliver discusses the material altruism of the egg. A police detective, Frank Logan (Dylan Baker), stops by to talk to Henry. Oliver brings some flowers to Claire, apparently interested in the older woman, but she rebuffs him and tells him to leave her alone.

An older man, Henry returns to his techno-modern house with his young bride, Elizabeth, and introduces his staff. Everything happens as it did before, but with minor differences. One evening Elizabeth enters the kitchen to find Claire, who is startled. Elizabeth expresses she is curious about so many things. Henry interrupts, clearly perturbed that Claire is in the house after dark. Elizabeth enters the forbidden room again, but this time apparently awakens her doppelganger. The next morning Henry, sensing she has been snooping, tries to strangle her. She manages to stab Henry in the neck, killing him. She cleans up, and calls Emergency Services to help her escape the house.

Claire returns to the house that morning and suffers a heart attack, also calling Emergency Services. Oliver understands that she killed and hid Henry’s body, wishing Claire was available to explain to Elizabeth. He tells her that she is the fifth of six clones of Henry’s dead wife; part of the Elizabeth Harvest. Detective Logan returns to question Elizabeth about her emergency call, but she lies and says it was only Claire. Just then Oliver shoots him. He was on the take from Henry, apparently. Elizabeth deduces that Oliver is Henry’s son just before he locks her in the closet, forcing her to read Claire’s journal to provide answers for them both.

The journal explains that Dr. Claire Stratton came to work for Henry 5 years previous, to assist him with solving the neurodegenerative disease his wife had; and that the clones have. The first two in the batch were stricken, but the third survived. However, she was mentally deficient and weak and soon died, suffocated by her pillows as she slept. As Oliver continues to pry more information out of Elizabeth’s reading of the journal, he answers some of her questions as well. Oliver was blinded at 12 for being interested/jealous in an 8 year old Elizabeth clone (who Henry was also “touching”). Claire’s journal reveals that Henry wanted to experience the joy of his wedding night over and over again with a woman that never aged, which he called crass.

In reality, after killing the previous Elizabeth with the machete, he confesses to Claire that she continues to bring him joy, by dying over and over again–out of the reach of man’s laws. Elizabeth also tells Oliver that Claire believed he was a clone of Henry, but she then lies saying she saw the birth certificate. He can be whoever he wants, says Elizabeth. Suddenly the sixth Elizabeth enters the room with a rifle and shoots Oliver (whom she believes is Henry), also injuring Elizabeth 5. Dying, Elizabeth 5 whispers something to Elizabeth 6. When Claire returns to the house, Elizabeth 6, is packed with a bag and a painting. She hands the journal back to Claire, asking her to do something good with it.

“The only measure of an action, is consequence.” – Henry Kellenberg

 

Elizabeth Harvest is more sci-fi film than most (including last Saturday’s film Night of the Creeps), yet still contains enough horrific elements to please die-hards. But the science-fiction of the film is only a means to an end, as it allows for the thematic elements of the plot to unfold. As many reviewers of the film point out, the story is based on a late 17th Century French folktale called Bluebeard. It revolves around a man who murders his wives as the most recent wife attempts to avoid the same fate. It’s an inverted version of the Black Widow story, about a murdering wife. Director Sebastian Gutierrez took the elements of the story and imbued a sci-fi aspect to them. The cloning of Elizabeth enhances the thematic elements of the story, so instead of a series of random women, the wife that Henry kills is always the same woman.

Potentially the most shocking elements of the film, besides the gruesome murder of Elizabeth, and the death of Henry, is their relationship. He is a 60-plus year old man. She’s a young thirty-something. Outwardly he’s friendly, brilliant, and successful. Inwardly (or towards those closest to him) he’s misogynistic, entitled, and psychopathic. The full measure of the man isn’t revealed until the end of the film, but his intentions are revealed by his quote above regarding the consequences of his actions. There are no consequences to his actions as far as he can tell. He clones his dead wife, no consequence. He clones himself and blinds his “son, no consequence. He kills multiple versions of his wife, no consequence. As he describes to Detective Logan, he would rather be the torturer than the tortured–being that these are the only two choices. He almost typifies the mad scientist of old horror films (such as Frankenstein or The Invisible Man) except for his outright disrespect for Elizabeth.

If Henry is to be believed, at some point in the past before she died, Elizabeth brought him joy. Her death was a tragic blow to him. A young man losing a young wife is tragic, especially through no fault of their own (she had a rare strain of the disease called Werner Syndrome, which causes premature aging; progeria). Yet he continued his life, setting about ways to bring back his wife via cloning. Claire calls Henry out for wanting to sleep with “young, adoring flesh that never grows old.” Henry feels that her assessment is crass. He claims he wants the euphoria of his wedding night. He wants to recapture the past. But it’s really about his need for control.Somewhere his mania turned vile and misogynistic. He realized that the joy Elizabeth can now provide is in her death. Joy “out of reach of man’s laws,” he adds. She is dead. Died years ago. Who would believe that he was murdering this woman? She’s not real, he claims, and certainly not his Elizabeth. He owns her; created her, to do his will. She is not alive to have a life of her own. In one early scene he creepily beckons her to the piano where she sits on his lap, as would a young girl. He wants to send the servants away and stay in bed with her all day. To him, she is in his service. When she fails to fulfill that duty, and by opening the Harvest room, he kills her. However he has designed her to be this curious kitten. He presents the temptation of that closed door which is too much for her curiosity, and he knows that his joy will soon follow.

Director Gutierrez (who happens to be married to Carla Gugino) creates a lavish and beautifully designed film. The composition is meticulous, and often symmetrical. His blocking is clear, creating meaning with the positioning of his actors. And uses color to enhance the story and mood. Besides the colors of the characters’ clothing (specifically the versions of Elizabeth who each have different styles of dress), Gutierrez’s use of colored lighting plays strongly into the emotions of the film. The flashback is told mostly in a cool blue lighting scheme, possibly intimating the fading of the past. There are moments in the Harvest Room, or in Henry’s confessional moments, that are lit red. The strong red of passion. Or of murder. There are also scenes that take on green hues of envy or perhaps indicating poison. One such is Henry talking to the Detective about Elizabeth #3, who tried to run away and was returned under the guise of being Claire’s niece. It is implied that Henry paid off the cop to keep him quiet, thus poisoning his virtue.

Elizabeth Harvest also makes wide use of common (and some not-so-common) horror motifs and symbols. Scissors, which are both a symbol of men (ie. stabbing, as are the phallic knives and the machete) as well as a strong female symbol (typifying their legs as an element of castration), appear often. Henry uses them on the wedding night to literally cut Elizabeth’s underwear off. Oliver threatens her later with the same large pair of shears, but she turns the tables attempting to seduce him and saying he “can use those shears and cut off my underwear and make me yours.” Mirrors also play a popular role in the film. These usually symbolize duality and represent the multiple Elizabeth’s. One scene has Elizabeth seductively kissing her own reflection, presaging the closeness of two of the clones in the final moments. The film also uses symbolic mirroring via set design, frame composition, and story. Elizabeth’s first and last lines of the movie are identical, about her dreaming she would meet a man. However, the final line in the film adds “but I’m awake now,” showing the growth of the character over several consecutive lives. There’s also much said about eggs. These are obviously a symbol of fertility and life, but Oliver also mentions that they change form and become something else. That they are also a symbol for the soul. Yet there was no egg that was fertilized to create Elizabeth. She was cloned from cells from the original model and birthed in a lab. Her entrance into the real world (of Henry’s estate) occurs symbolically by the tunnel that leads from wherever to Henry’s estate. Thus representing the trip from the womb into the world.

In the end, the film’s final and overall theme is that people are defined by the choices they make. Sometimes the choices seem correct in the moment. But over time they may reveal themselves as tainted. Henry’s choices to recreate Elizabeth were made out of love (presumably). But over time, the complications of the process, and the length of time on the project (he had to grow these Elizabeth’s for years to maturity), all wear away on his sanity and his morality. Elizabeth #5 offers the same words to Oliver as she lies about him being a clone of his father. She says that his genetics doesn’t matter, and that he can be whatever he wants to be. In a nature vs nurture argument (about where people get their proclivities from), that appears to be the nature side of the argument, as his feelings of rage and misogyny mirror Henry’s. Elizabeth Harvest opens a lot of complicated doors in the viewer’s mind. Some it warns not to open. It then goes and opens them anyway, leading to a rich, and disturbing, parable.

Assorted Musings

• Abbey Lee appeared as Sarah, one of the three models, in The Neon Demon two years before this role.
• Dylan Baker appears as Principal Wilkins in last night’s film Trick ‘r Treat.
• Ciarán Hinds also played the villain in the not-scary Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance.
• The film has much in common with both Crimson Peak–a gothic romance, and Ex Machina–a sci-fi story with similar themes of creation, possessiveness, and free will.