Monday 9 April 2012

DVD review: Garden of Love (Video 2003)


On Christmas eve a hippie collective gets massacred. The only survivor is a young girl Rebecca who fall into a coma and wake up two years later with the trauma deeply buried in her subconscious. Many years later, Rebecca (Natacza Boon) lives a wonderful life in a perfect relationship - until she starts being plagued by horrific visions. When she discovers the truth about her past she goes back to his childhood home in hopes of getting rid of the hallucinations, but instead it will be right there that the real horror begins ... Garden of Love is written by Thomas Reitmair and Olaf Ittembach who also is the director and responsible for the design of make-up gore fx. In attempt to reach a wider internaional market the mostly German actors try to speak & act in English, the acting is decent, it´s professionally shot and edited (there is no quick editing or shaky cam) and the soundtrack is good. The pacing is pretty slow, there is more focus on plot and characters compared to Ittenbach´s earlier films. There is a lot of blood, gore and excessive violence. The gory set-pieces are impressive and provides further evidence that Olaf Ittenbach is the current king of make-up gore fx. We get slashed throats, decapitations, exploding heads, disembowellments, gory shotgun wounds and much more. The make-up gore fx are amazing and once again Olaf Ittenbach proves his craftmanship and no horrible computer gendered effects in sight.
This review is based upon the region 2 release from Njuta Films, it´s uncut and has swedish, danish, norwegian and finnish subtitles. Garden of Love is also known under the title The Haunting of Rebecca Verlaine in the US.
Rating: 5½ out of 7. The highlight of film is the gore and there is a lot of it. Garden of Love is fairly entertaining  and well worth viewing if you are a gorehound.


/JL



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