Fertile Ground

Plot synopsis:
Emily (Leisha Hailey) and Nate Weaver (Gale Harold) are a happily married couple living in New York City. Nate is a recognized artist, Emily a fashion designer and the two are expecting their first child. Emily suffers a terrible miscarriage during a dinner party and she is informed that the scarring left on her womb means that she will never be able to conceive again."Starting Over"To give them both a fresh start, Nate and Emily move out into the countryside to Nate's family home which has been uninhabited for some time. Enchanted by it, Emily agrees to move in with Nate to start her life all over again. Emily decides to re-start her fashion design business while Nate, an artist, decides to start painting again."Moving In"As Emily and Nate settle into their new country house, Emily begins seeing things that may or may not be real such as a handprint that appears on a window pane, and keeps reappearing after she cleans it again and again. A few days later, when Emily is horrified when a skeleton is discovered during an inspection of the house plumbing but it is obvious that the body is very old so no danger can be attached to the house. Nate decides to use the large outdoor shed as a studio while Emily takes one of the old bedrooms as her workshop."New Life"After Emily discovers an old trunk filled with baby things in the cellar she pays a visit to the local Historical Society and is told that the house has a past she and Nate were unaware of. Several suspicious deaths have occurred at the property and a female relative of Nate's vanished without trace when the house was new. Nate grows distant as he starts painting again and he refuses to let Emily see his new work. Tense and isolated, Emily starts to see visions of a woman covered with blood and faints. After seeing the doctor, who thinks she is suffering from trauma, she gets a phone call to tell her that she is actually pregnant."Old Secrets"Ordered to spend the bulk of her pregnancy in bed resting due to the high risk of miscarriage, Emily starts to get bored and frustrated by Nate who is working longer and longer hours and seems uninterested in her or the coming baby. Emily's visions continue and she thinks that she can see the missing aunt of Nate's walking about the property."Strange Happenings"Emily's nightmares and visions become more and more frequent as Nate continues to confine himself to the shed to work on his paintings and Emily becomes more bored and distant. When Nate is around, he is seemingly angry most of the time which concerns Emily. She begins to see Nate as a different person, whom was his great-great gradfather whom lived in the house in the 1870s and was said to have murdered his pregnant wife."The Gathering"Organising a party so she can see her city friends, Emily believes that Nate's female agent is having an affair with her husband. Soon afterwards the agent somehow falls through the window in Emily's studio and is hospitalized. Nate thinks Emily may have pushed her as he saw her in the room after the woman fell and tells Emily's best friend, Brittany, that he is concerned for Emily's health. When the couple receives a call to tell them that the agent has died, Nate storms out."Revelations"Left alone over the next two days, Emily reads through a folder of press cuttings left by a man from the historical society who has been trying to reach her and discovers that all the women who died at the house were killed by their husbands. She has another vision of the dead woman and believes that Nate is coming back to kill her. She calls Brittany who tells her that she will come and pick her up. Terrified, Emily hides in her bedroom with a knife when she hears Nate come back into the house. She tries to stab him with the knife but instead stabs her friend- who had driven back with Nate. She and Nate then fight resulting in Emily killing Nate.At the hospital, a scan reveals that Emily is not pregnant although she believes that she is.... apparently the phone call from the doctor and the visions of the ghosts were indeed all in her head, a symptom of true psychosis triggered by her previous miscarage. The final shot shows Emily in a padded room at the local insane asylum, rocking her imaginary child in her arms.

Tags: insanity, horror, murder, haunting

Review:
The movie "Fertile Ground" took me by surprise.
I had not heard about it prior to picking it up, so when I found out it was an After Dark horror series movie, I was pleasantly surprised, because they usually put out some nice movies."Fertile Ground" does not deliver any groundbreaking new storyline, everything here has been seen before.
The storyline, shortly summarized, is: Nate and Emily Weaver are living in the city and expecting a child, when they suffer an unfortunate miscarriage.
It turns out that they have an unknown relation to the story of the house, and things start to turn dark and dire...The movie builds up a lot of suspense and there is always something just lurking below the surface, which is good, because it makes you want to see more and know more.
There is also a good amount of thrills and scenes that make you jump in your seat.As for the acting in the movie, well it was mostly people I hadn't seen before, or at least can't remember having seen before.
And the movie is mainly carried by Leisha Hailey (playing Emily Weaver).
The people in the movie all did good jobs with their roles and their acting.Having seen the movie now, and read some reviews here and there, I don't really understand why people shoot this movie down, because I found it to be a good horror movie.
It has all the necessary ingredients to make a good horror movie.
If you like horror movies, then check out "Fertile Ground"..
I must say that Gale Harold gives a really good and interesting performance in this, the other actors are OK, far better then what usually turns up in typical horror films.
One thing I really liked was there are no stupid teenagers or slashers in here, too many horror films feel they need that to sell the viewer but not here.
It is more of a supernatural horror film, not too much blood and guts like most turn out to be, this one has it's scary moments without that and without being stupid or boring.
I would recommend this to any horror fan who likes supernatural/ghost movies..
I'll start by saying, this has all the makings of a decent movie, namely acting and production value.
All these After Dark horror movies are the same.
At least stuff happens in that movie, and I only waste 83 minutes or whatever.
Fertile Ground (2011) Been on my watch list for a while, Couple move to home after the wife losses her baby, then move they move to a new house, Then wife see strange thing start to happen around the house and husband dose not believe.
This movie felt like every other haunted house movie I have seen, I felt that didn't really got ground , this movie didn't not feel scary for one second, the whole movie was bit bland.It could be really boring no real plot in the movie, it could the be really bad script (Half of it didn't even make sense or it could have been the really bad acting from everyone in this movie, i would say all of the above.
I wouldn't say the worst haunted house movie but it as got to be one of the most boring ones i ever seen.
As I said before there isn't that much of horror it's more a ghost story with towards the final part of this flick some cruelty.
I'm always on the search for new horror movies and they generally fail to make me finish the film and feel scared or, more importantly, think "that was a great film".This one is just the same.
I rated FERTILE GROUND as high as I did purely on the outstanding performance of Leisha Hailey.
Aren't they all derived from our own fears and experiences?FERTILE GROUND was just another episodic adventure into the nightmare world of one woman.It's been a long time since I've seen such a good performance; and, I really think Leisha Hailey carried the film.
If you are looking for something very original, check art house, not horror.There is still an unresolved question in the end, if there really was something supernatural in the house or the woman just gone mad because of her stresses, coincidences and imagination.
Just yesterday I've watched another movie with a similar plot - "Deadline", but "Fertile Ground" is better, in my opinion..
After Dark Original- Good Ghost Story Thriller.
While there was no true originality, which is hard tgese days, I think the cast and crew did a good job putting putting together a haunted house / ghost story , depth into madness film.
It's gotta be one of the most boring "horror" movies I've ever seen.
I was assuming after looking at the cover and it's R ( in Australia) rating that there'd be a bit of gore and excitement.I saw all of the After Dark titles on the shelf and assumed they'd be good.
After moving out to a secluded family-owned house in the wilderness, a woman begins to fear that the ghost of an ancestor is looking to be reborn through her unborn baby and tries to save herself before succumbing to a curse that will enable it to happen.An overall decent enough effort, as there's some pretty good stuff here and a couple utterly aggravating ones.
The initial mystery of the house and how it's built up are fairly well-done, with some classic old-school style hauntings of things reappearing or doing something they're not supposed to be doing just off-screen from their viewpoint or the old standard of a figure dashing by in the background, but as well the unraveling mystery of what's going on inside makes for some really good stuff.
That makes the finale pretty interesting with it's action sequences of trying to keep the possessed figure out of the house, but the film ultimately suffers due to the utterly aggravating and totally irritating tactic of trying to force the fact that behavioral change is the main selling point of something horrific or terrifying in the course of the film, and instead of generating fear, it instills anger at him for the treatment inflicted upon her and annoyance at her for putting up with it to begin with.
That also leaves a large segment of the middle of the film totally devoid of action, lowering it's momentum and pacing somewhat, but overall it's still not a bad time at all.Rated R: Graphic Language, Violence, Nudity and a mild sex scene..
the movie is divided into parts, so viewer can predict what's going to happened next.
'FERTILE GROUND': Two Stars (Out of Five)  2011 was not a very good year for 'After Dark Originals'!
This one is directed and  co-written (along with Jace Anderson) by Adam Gierasch (the man behind  another much better 'After Dark Original' from two years ago:  'AUTOPSY') and revolves around a pregnant woman being haunted by ghosts  of the people who passed away in her home years earlier.
It's pretty  poorly made on all levels and is pretty much a waste of time for  anyone, even if you're a horror film fanatic.
Leisha Hailey stars as Emily Weaver, a happily pregnant woman who  suffers a severe miscarriage as the film begins.
She then moves out to  a house she inherited in the country, with her husband Nate (Gale  Harold), to get away from things.
When Emily (Leisha Hailey) has a miscarriage of her baby, she decides to move to the countryside with her husband Nate Weaver (Gale Harold) to live in an isolated ancient house that had belonged to Nate's family.
Further she learns that pregnant women have been murdered in that house and Nate is possessed by the evil spirit of his ancestor."Fertile Ground" is an unoriginal and mediocre collection of clichés.
In a nutshell: An unshowered boring-as-hell woman walks around the house seeing things.
The entire movie was spoiled by cheapo filming that looked like it was done with an old camera with videotape still in it.
They did show up to film this movie.
You keep expecting something to happen, and nothing ever really does.A couple move into a haunted house.
People die, the end.It's been done a thousand times, and a thousand times better than this.Has a crappy ending, too.Why waste the time, you can find a much better movie to watch.
The trailer made this look good, but you are better off just watching the trailer.
I'm not picky at all about horror movies I watch.
The story itself was derivative, pulled mostly from pregnancy themed horror movies (at least only in the sense that pregnancy is used as a means of giving the heroine something to protect) and otherwise, a large amount was borrowed from The Shining.
****SPOILERS**** It's when fashion designer Emily Weaver, Leisha Halley,suffered a miscarriage with black not red blood gushing out of her what ever it was decided by her husband Nate, Gale Harold, for the two to move out of New York City and to his ancestral home in New Hampshire that's been in the Weaver family since, when buffalo and Indians roamed the countryside, the mid 1700's.
At first everything was honky doorie for the young couple until Emily started to see things in and out of the house that didn't really exist but only in her mind.
It's when Emerly was found to be pregnant by a local what looked like quack doctor that she realized that she didn't have long to live and that it was her loving and caring husband, who had since gone cold towards her , Nate like the previous male members of the Weaver clan who's going to do her in!
All this time Emily has been seeing ghosts of the past roaming around the Weaver house and in one case killing Nate's co-worker Risa, Stephanie Brown,at the art gallery whom she suspected him of having an affair with her by pushing her out of a two story window with her bleeding, black blood, to death before help arrived.***SPOILERS***It's Emily's good friend Brittany, JoNell Kennedy, who knows that she needs help before she ends up killing herself or someone else who tried to come to help her only to get herself stabbed to death by accident by Emily who mistakes her for Nate whom she feels is out to murder her.
We soon find out that Emily is completely psycho and all this, what's going on in her head, is conjured up by her in the aftermath of the miscarriage she suffered at the beginning of the movie.This lead to Emily ending up in a padded room at a local mental asylum for the criminally insane by the time the film ended..
Director, co-writer and even cast member, Adam Gierasch brings us the tale of Emily Weaver, a city girl who, after her miscarriage is whisked by her husband to his family home in rural Iowa.The country idyll and her own recovery begin to pale as she discovers the grizzly past of former occupants whose malevolent spirits haunt the house.
Seen through the eyes of our heroine, she sees her artist husband's agent Risa attempting a romantic intrigue with him, her best friend Brittany conspiring with him and the man himself falling into madness whilst plotting her demise.We are of course given enough clues - depression, stopping medication, hints of paranoia - to work out the truth and to guess the ending which takes an overlong time to appear on the horizon.Whilst there are a few scary and gory moments, there is not enough here even to pad out an hour and a half which means it feels like two hours or more until we reach a quite expected denouement.
The camera work, location shooting and general air of cleverness seem to indicate an attempt to produce a serious horror movie.
A symptom of bad casting, writing, editing (essential parts of his development could have ended up on the cutting room floor) or bad acting.The sound design was good but the dialogue had issues.
Charges of unoriginality and predictability are often leveled against your average B-grade horror pap, but rarely have I seen a film so deserving of these criticisms.Without even a touch of hyperbole, almost every plot turn could easily be predicted beforehand.
The tree planted in the backyard, where she ends up at the end, Nate's paintings, the fates of Nate and her friend, even the bathroom scene near the beginning of the film - all utterly predictable.
I swear, if you simply told the title - "Fertile Ground" - to a horror film buff who hadn't seen it they'd soon be piecing together something very close to the plot after not very long.Positives?
What horror fan wants to pick out 'lighting' as one of a film's few merits?!So, overall, not many positives here.
I "had to" watch it because my girlfriend's nephew was in it.The nephew did all right in his small part.The two main characters were not very likable, so it was difficult to "care" about what happened to them.The bad background music was louder than the dialog in some places; the sound was also echo-y and sometimes hard to understand.After moving - away from the woman's friends so she can get over her depression, which doesn't make any sense - they find an adult human skull in the clogged drain of their new house, which also doesn't make any sense because the pipe was too small.Some medium-sized furry animals I couldn't identify - big squirrels?
- made a couple of appearances for no apparent reason.I guess it was supposed to be about ghosts, but it seemed more like the woman was just getting nutty.
Movie Cobbles Best Haunted House Material.
"Fertile Ground" is basically the Frankenstein of haunted house movies.
Basically everything in the script has been borrowed or taken from other much better ghost movies.
You have the wife who is suffering loss in the form of her stillborn child, the husband who brings her out to the middle of no where "for her health" far from an unidentified rural town, she's left alone a lot for pretty much to let her imagination to run wild and for the ghosts to scare her, and as usual, the husband never believes her stories.
There are some very chilling scenes, several legitimate scares and the actors pull off fine performances, but the drawback is that the movie ends very unsatisfactory.
Maybe that's the point – to create a scary ghost movie that doesn't end on a happy note or a now-what-happens scene.
"Fertile Ground" might be heavily formulaic, but the direction and climax are worth the watch..
Some horror films have little happening on screen while building atmosphere.
And while the acting of the two leads is very strong (Leisha Hailey as Emily and Gale Harold as Nate – Hailey in particular provides a convincing essay on descent into total misery), this kind of story has been told many times before.
It doesn't help that the ghosts are very solid looking, and that the undead William is played by Gale Harold in a wig.In the end, we are undecided whether or not Emily's tragedy is to blame for her own cruel madness or whether the curse of the house has been pre-planned all along..
To write a review about this film is hard, when you don't want to sound like you hated it, when you thought it was okay...
It is not scary, so horror or thriller is overreacting, but if your girlfriend can't take much gore or is easily scared, this film might be the perfect one, before you start with something like the ring or saw.The story has potential, it is a common horror story plot line, with a couple moving to the countryside, but with a bit more background than most of those plot lines.
Here I at first got some hope, that it won't be as boring as most films with these plot lines are...
Yeah, as mentioned, disappointed viewer.When Emily starts to see things, you kinda get a bit creeped and wonder what is the reason, but it soon is boring.
Wasted potential A.Since she found this kinda box, the story gets interesting about the people who lived there before and later on, they find a skeleton in their yard.Nate turns kinda like Jack Nicholson in the Shining and you have this unseen, only mentioned panting on which he is working and you get hinted to many times.
It's repetitive and leaves a feeling of "buying time" so the film won't end after 30mins (which would have improved it to at least 6.5 starts in my opinion...).At their housewarming party Emily gets again one of those "psychomoments" and the first really mysterious thing happens.
You get the long, boring, every-move is predictable ending, which is a classical horror film ending.
In the ending I see wasted potential D.The final scenes of the film are not needed if you didn't fall asleep during the final, but just in case you did, it will kinda explain it to you.Making a good horror film is hard, yes.
But when you got such a good idea, decent actors and wasted potential don't make a film needlessly longer so you can get it to be a long-running film.
Most porn films take more time.Any time a horror film ends with the main character alone in a loony-bin cell, looking lost and confused, you know you've just seen a forgettable movie.
I watched this film a second time after seeing the ending and it completely confirmed my feelings toward the character of Nate.
Like I said, the direction was lost in trying to make this film something that it wasn't, I felt that the writers, producers, and director tried to sell a lemon as an orange.
Basically, the film was ruined for me by the direction, the writing, and the character of Emily Weaver.