MOON GARDEN (2022) is a strange little fantasy film from writer/director (and also editor, and sound designer, and production designer, and art director, and visual effects artist, and colorist, and animator) Ryan Stevens Harris. Oscilloscope Laboratories gave it an arthouse theatrical run, and recently put it on blu-ray and DVD, and it’s also on Shudder at the moment, though I wouldn’t really think of it as a horror movie.
I realize I’ve written more than one review lately that starts out by saying how simple the concept is, but that seems silly now because this is a simple one. A little girl named Emma (Haven Lee Harris, seven year old daughter of the director) falls down some stairs, goes into a coma, finds herself in a creepy dream world where she can kind of hear things from reality, and sometimes goes into her memories, as she tries to wake up. There’s a little more to it that I will go into in a minute, but mostly it’s not about talking, she doesn’t seem to have much scripted dialogue, the sound effects are more important than most of the words that are spoken. It’s mostly a series of strange experiences, encounters and images, an Alice in Wonderland/RETURN TO OZ type of story, but very DIY, and stylistically and tonally reminiscent of the works of Jan Svankmajer and the Brothers Quay. It also made me think of Phil Tippet’s MAD GOD, though Harris said he hadn’t seen that yet when he was promoting this. And I suppose there’s a trace of BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD in there.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Last year, Jamie Lee Curtis returned as Laurie Strode in 
