ELIZABETH HARVEST Explained: A Dark, Horror-like Fairy Tale

We have a freshly married couple – a young woman and an older man – driving to his home, which will now also be her home. It is located in a beautiful, yet isolated area. The house is managed by the housekeeper Claire, with the assistance of Oliver, a young blind boy. The husband shares all of his wealth with his wife – money, jewels, works of art, and a rich wardrobe, perfectly tailored for a woman – but forbids her from entering one single room in the entire house. The scanner reacts to the thumbs of both, so it is not that the wife cannot enter the forbidden room. And one night, when the man is not at home, Elizabeth crosses the threshold of her husband’s study. She sees something that terrifies and shocks her, and when Henry returns the next day and discovers his wife’s betrayal, he greets her with a machete in hand. Elizabeth Harvest it is.

Those who remember will immediately recognize the outline of the Bluebeard story, the fairy tale about a nobleman who kills his young wives for disobedience. In fact, a certain fairy-tale quality appears right away when we hear the thoughts of the main character. We learn from them that she has always dreamed of meeting a wonderful man who would take her to his castle. Moreover, when she is finally at his place, her innocent, yet strikingly fairy-tale beauty contrasts with the ordinary, or perhaps even sinister, people present there. But the whole thing strikes with the aforementioned artificiality. Henry’s words (the imposing Ciarán Hinds, as tall as an oak and statuesque) seem rehearsed, Elizabeth’s behavior suggests some kind of enslavement, of which even she is not aware, and the house – although beautiful, rich, and surprisingly warm – lacks life. Even the English accent of native American Carla Gugino as Claire may disrupt the rhythm for those who know her real voice.

The way the screenwriter and director of the film, Sebastián Gutiérrez, drives the action is also intriguing. There are scenes so unnatural that they create a distance between the story and its characters. The first night of the young couple is presented in several quick shots of scissors cutting through the woman’s lingerie. We only see the cutting of garter straps or a bra, but the people are missing, as if the act itself was important, not the participants. When Elizabeth then falls onto the bed, it’s impossible to read anything from her face. The role is played by Australian model Abbey Lee, still perhaps best known as one of the escapees in Mad Max: Fury Road. She does well in the leading role, as she resembles a trophy rather than a real person; something to be shown off, used, and played with. She is the most beautiful and most important object in the house, but ultimately just an object. The first half hour of the film has such a strong male gaze that it is hard to believe the director could escape accusations of treating the woman instrumentally and chauvinistically, here reduced solely to a piece of flesh. And until the machete comes into play, and the titular fate is somehow explained, it is difficult to understand anything about Gutiérrez’s intentions, who modernized the fairy tale but never revealed why.

At this point, the film starts anew, and all the previous reservations begin to make sense. However, it is impossible to talk about it without revealing the surprise, or rather a series of surprises, which begins with the scene when the main character decides to uncover the secret of the forbidden room. Without going into details, I will try to explain what Elizabeth Harvest really is and what themes it explores.

Promoted as a “horror from the creator of Gothika,” the film is more of a psychological thriller with elements of fairy tale, horror, and fantasy, often spiced with dark humor. In that film (which was only written by Gutiérrez, not directed), Halle Berry is placed in a psychiatric hospital after she kills her husband. She doesn’t remember it because she was controlled by a ghost, but in the finale, we learn that the man got what he deserved. And it is precisely the motif of the woman being exploited by the man that Gutiérrez returns to in his new film, using a fairy tale to tell a universal story of the desire to possess and destroy.

Henry has reasons for forbidding Elizabeth to enter his study, but ultimately, the ban is a kind of invitation, because the husband knows exactly how his wife will react. He expects her to break her promise, which will allow him to react brutally while also justifying such an act. But who would he want to justify himself to? To another woman, of course. At first, Claire seems like a loyal servant, more favorable to the master than to the mistress (echoes of Hitchcock’s Rebecca can be heard here), but her true role in the story is revealed much later. She is more than a passive observer and silent accomplice, serving as a reminder to Henry that his motives were once noble. But that was in the past. Now the man is only playing, and even the woman doesn’t protest, even when he wants her to.

There is also the blind Oliver (the quiet Matthew Beard), who might be Henry’s son, or perhaps someone else to him. A helper, a rival, or another person who exists in his life to serve him. The young man, however, has his own plans, although his nature is the same as his master’s. Gutiérrez shows familiar situations in different variations and from different perspectives, but with only four actors at his disposal (plus Dylan Baker in a minor role as a policeman), he essentially tells the story of only two characters – the man and the woman. There is no difference between Henry and Oliver or Elizabeth and Claire. We see these characters through the lens of their gender, not the role they play in the story, but rather the roles. Each of them plays different parts, all somehow pretending or trying to be someone they are not. Only by knowing the whole truth about the events we are witnessing can we see the purpose and meaning of the story.

However, before we get to that, many viewers will give up. The film has a very slow pace, is stylistically attractive, but not necessarily genre-wise (those who expect a horror film will leave the screening at least disappointed by the lack of typical horror attractions), and the lack of a character to sympathize with or relate to may also create a distance from the story. The narrative is made up of numerous flashbacks, repetitions, and dream or hallucination scenes. These serve the film’s themes, but make the whole thing resemble an arthouse convention, reminding one of the works of Nicolas Winding Refn, in whose Neon Demon Abbey Lee also appeared. I was surprised by the pleasure I got from watching Elizabeth Harvest despite my initial reservations, although this is definitely a film that requires some engagement to say anything good about it.