Thursday, October 12, 2023

'Garden of Souls' contains both good and bad

Garden of Souls (2022)
Starring: Betty Roehm Widdoss, Karen Lynn Gorney, Eric Bower, and Jackie Capizzi
Director: Christopher Milewski
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

A grieving young widow (Widdoss) is approached by a strange old woman (Gorney) with a promise to  reunite her with her dead love.


"Garden of Souls" is one of many attempts at emulating the style and content of silent movies from the 1910s and 1920s that you can find while prowling through the depths of YouTube. Although the pacing is a bit slow at times and the story logic is a bit murky, the creators here captured the style of early films with great effectiveness.

One thing that would have improved this film would have been a more effective use of the color tinting. I am not a fan of this, but when I've seen it used in actual vintage films, I could easily and quickly grasp what they were trying to convey, either scenery-wise or character-wise. Here, there didn't seem to be an immediate comprehensible reason for some of the color choices -- or maybe I was just particularly dense on the day I watched the film. Take a moment and watch the film (embedded below for your convenience) and tell me what YOU think the viewer should infer from the various tints.

Another thing that would have made this a much stronger film would have been a stronger attention to detail as far as the costumes go. In one scene, Widdoss character while dressed in an immaculate white gown picks up a shovel and starts digging in a grave. When she's done, her gown is still spotless. This REALLY pulled me out of the film, and I think that even filmmakers in the 1910s would have dirtied her up a bit.


No comments:

Post a Comment