Celia
A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.
Janis
One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.
Billy Ollie
Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable
FilmFatale
In 1990, all of the residents of the Verlaine Farm commune were brutally murdered with cleaver and a kitchen knife in the night except for young Rebecca, who survives in spite of also being attacked. Rebecca spends two years in a coma before being released into the custody of her relatives and seems to grow up relatively unscathed. After reaching college age, Rebecca starts seeing visions of disfigured corpses and begins to investigate the massacre. As she learns more about her past, she finds that the vengeful ghosts of her father and the other commune members are the least of her worries.I'll be honest here: I wasn't holding out much hope for this one simply because it was an Olaf Ittenbach film and I only knew him for flicks like Premutos. However, I was pleasantly surprised that this isn't a bad little movie. The acting is passable, the story moves along well enough, and the gore (of course) is over the top but fun and well-done. Of course there are problems, like too many plot conveniences and a couple of overly long "This is the exposition part of the movie" monologues, but I didn't have a bad time with Garden of Love.
BA_Harrison
The only survivor of a horrific massacre when she was six years old, Rebecca Verlaine (Natacza Boon) has blocked out all memory of the terrible event, so she is understandably shocked when she begins to experience visions of her dead father and his mutilated pals, urging her to find those responsible for their deaths so that they can seek retribution.Garden of Love? Don't worry… Olaf Ittenbach hasn't gone soft on us and made a romantic drama; despite the soppy sounding title, it's business as usual for the German splatter director, meaning extreme gore by the bucket-load, with heads squished, bodies torn asunder, guts ripped out, and blood splashed all over the place. The only problem is that, in order to get to the good stuff, one has to endure those other Ittenbach movie traits: iffy acting (English dialogue with a strong Teutonic twist), questionable direction, and uneven pacing—in this case the film takes an age to get going, explodes into violence for the film's standout scene, drags again, and then gets nice and bloody for the ending.Still, fans of the director's other work should be well aware of what they're getting into and will no doubt hang on in there though the less eventful bits, safe in the knowledge that, when Ittenbach does open his bag of special effects, it is guaranteed to get very messy indeed.
Paul Andrews
Garden of Love starts late one night in a seemingly normal farm house, however when local police arrive there after a phone-call they discover several horribly mutilated murder victims & one survivor a young girl named Rebecca Verlaine (Anika Julien) who is found in a come. Twelve years later & Rebecca (Natacza Boon) comes out of her coma & is adopted by some relatives, at first Rebecca has no memory of the horrendous events that left her entire family dead but slowly she starts to remember & soon starts suffering from terrifying visions of mutilated ghostly people talking to her. Rebecca & her now husband David (Daryl Jackson) decide to revisit her childhood home to confront her demons, what Rebecca finds at her old home leads to betrayal & brutal murder...Also known under the title The Haunting of Rebecca Verlaine in the US this German production was co-written & directed Olaf Ittenbach who was also responsible for the numerous gory special make-up effects which to fair are probably the highlight of the film. Not that it matters that much but first off I feel like I should mention the (proper) title Garden of Love (I can see why it was changed for US distribution) because I have absolutely no idea why Garden of Love is called Garden of Love, there are no garden's & there's not that much love either so why is this called Garden of Love exactly? Anyway, the film itself is notable for it's very gory set-pieces which are pretty impressive (no horrible CGI computer effects in sight) & that rather obvious fact that it was produced by German filmmakers in English for an English speaking audience & as such the barely legible broken English strange sounding dialogue gives Garden of Love a somewhat camp & surreal feel that I personally quite liked. I mean if the majority of the dialogue scenes in Garden of Love were written & shot properly it would probably make for an awfully dull film as the only thing of interest would be to see the next gore scene but with this slightly bizarre feel to it I found myself liking the whole thing. The first half of Garden of Love is a straight ghost story while the second half has a few twist's & changes direction & becomes a revenge story. I certainly didn't think it was dull & the strange uneven tone of the plot & the almost but not quite right sounding dialogue coupled with the cool gore scenes made for a fairly entertaining film, if not exactly for the right reasons.As I have already mentioned the real highlight of Garden of the Dead is the gore, there's loads of it. From slashed throats to decapitations to exploding heads to ripped out guts to face ripped off to heads ripped in half to someone being pushed through a wire fence with gory results to stabbings to someone getting their eyes drilled out to gory shotgun wounds & loads more besides. This one really hits the spot if you know what I mean. There's also a very amusing scene in which the ghost's take over a TV commercial for kitchen knives & the announcer says that this knife will cut through bone & proceeds to grab his female assistants arm & chop her hand off as a gory demonstration! I also have to mention that there are no quick editing or shaky hand-held camcorder moments which is just great & even more reason why I like this. You know, you can actually see whats meant to be going on!Although the film has that low budget made for video look about it the special effects are impressive & it has reasonable production values. The acting is very strange as obviously mostly German actors try to speak & act in English & it comes across as very stiff & awkward. Star Natacza Boon was actually born in England & even more bizarrely than anything in this film she had a documentary made about her by the BBC when she was 15 focusing on the fact that she apparently had the longest daily trip to school of anyone in the country as she travelled over 400 miles everyday to drama school (to end up in a film like this to, was it really worth it Natacza?) from when she was 12 until when she was 19.Garden of Love is an odd film made by Germans in a language they obviously didn't quite understand (think Troll 2 (1990) which was made by Italians in English) & as a result it has some unintentional comedy moments to go along with the rather impressive gore scenes. I liked it, so sue me.
straight-face
I have had the pleasure of seeing this film at a horror festival in Edinburgh. Garden of Love does not have a serious bone in its sick low-budget body. There is lots and lots of blood and gore, starting with the opening credits. The plot is extremely silly like everything else in this film. In fact you might say this film is a pastiche of gory films. At first this film seemed really bad, but it was so entertaining that the director must have been doing something right. Garden of Love definitely needs to be enjoyed in company (with like-minded people!).A lot of people were laughing at the quality of the acting, but to be so funny throughout the film it had to be deliberately bad - SURELY?. The character playing Munster was my definite favourite and I would see the film just for his extremely camp performance. I am not sure that many actors could have made the awful lines quite so funny.You may have gathered that Garden of Love won't be everyone's cup of tea but if you have a soft spot for bad taste gory films then see it, because it's wonderfully awful.
