The Greenhouse (2021) was written and directed by Thomas Wilson-White. The basic premise of the film is interesting. Four children have grown up with two mothers. One of the mothers has died. They return home for the birthday of the surviving mother.

After that, it all goes downhill. Instead of just showing us flashbacks, director Wilson-White gives us a haunted greenhouse, which more or less produces scenes in present time that should be flashbacks. OK--maybe that will work.

However, the people in the flashbacks become real, and they attack. We actually see young adults running and screaming in the woods as the creatures chase them. (Not kidding.)

We saw this film virtually from ImageOut, the (otherwise) excellent Rochester LGBT Film Festival. The movie has a terrible IMDb rating of 5.0. I didn't think it deserved a rating that high, and rated it 3.

There were several things that were done well here with the filming and the performances, but the writing was not one of them. This really just comes across as made for, about, and by people who like emptiness, who even prefer that over anything real or solid or healthy. I suppose it could have been meant as an exploration of that, as a cautionary tale, but I doubt it. I think even among postmodernists who do like that, most will dislike this film for its plodding pacing. I could have overlooked the pacing if it had had any redemption or growth or goodness or wisdom. But as it was, the film was just bad.

The general idea of this film is solid. Find a portal to the past and assess your issues. Not only your grief for your mother, but also the complex relationship you have/had with the literal girl-next-door.

The execution leaves something to be desired though. What are the specific rules for this portal? What are the consequences for staying? How much physicality is wanted/needed in the portal? Did you actually need THREE siblings to be part of the story? Why introduce an inconvenient boyfriend if he's eventually just quietly dismissed?

This feels a little bit like two films inexpertly crammed together. One about complex sibling relationships in a large family and One about the dangers of nostalgia. Each one is reasonably well executed, but put them together and they diminish each other.