Movies are magical. When done correctly, they have the power to manipulate the emotions of their audience and transport them to another world. The medium offers a chance to escape our surroundings and disappear from them for a couple of hours. These new places to be explored are not always safe environments however, and can be as confronting as the world around us. For example, Ryan Stevens Harris’s Moon Garden places the viewer into a strange dreamscape world, though it’s whimsy doesn’t sugarcoat any of the raw emotion running through the story.
Moon Garden tells the story of one five-year-old girl, Emma (Haven Lee Harris), who after falling into a coma awakens to a strange new place. Trapped inside her subconscious, Emma must journey through the weird, wonderful, and dangerous setting to make it back to her parents. Watching Moon Garden is akin to being trapped inside a nightmare. The viewer has no control over the events that unfold and it’s uncomfortable to have to passively sit and watch all manner of horrors descend upon a small child.
What makes Moon Garden so powerful is that Emma’s nightmare begins before the coma. Emma is awoken in the middle of the night by her mother Sara (Augie Duke) and bundled into a car. Just before they can exit the garage, Emma’s father, Alex (Brionne Davis), appears and drags them back into the house. The dynamic within the family is clearly dark and distressing, Emma being one of the many children that make the frightening statistics; Emma is a victim of domestic abuse. There’s an electricity of menace in these early scenes, Harris capturing the heightened threat that this environment breeds. Unable to cope with her parents’ constant shouting and aggression toward one another, Emma storms into their room, shouts at them to be quiet and then runs off. As she races away, she trips, plummeting down the stairs and enters the other world.
This new place carries the same malevolence of Emma’s home life, but is twisted and distorted in the way that only dreams can alter reality. As Emma begins to explore, dangers untold begin to reveal themselves. Straight out of the bleakest of Grimm fairytales, this other place is filled with disturbing imagery. A creature, credited with the name Teeth (Morgana Ignis), is pure nightmare fuel, and would make inhabitants of Pan’s Labyrinth cower in fear. The world is dark and whimsical and captures the essence of those children’s films from the eighties that were far too troubling for their target audience. Films such as Never Ending Story, Return to Oz, and The Dark Crystal were weighted down with emotion and anxiety, and Moon Garden follows suit. The atmosphere is made eerier still with the inclusion of a haunting rendition of Harry Nilsson’s Without You. It’s a song that Sara sings to her daughter, but as it permeates Emma’s dreamscape, it becomes warped and sinister.
Every frame of Moon Garden is drenched with melancholy, a sensation pushed further through the use of Emma’s memories. Flashbacks veer between sweet and harrowing, especially those that highlight Emma’s conflicted feelings towards her father. Children born into and brought up within an abusive environment know nothing else. Often, despite being fearful of the abuser in the house, the child will still care for them. It’s a confusing entanglement of emotions and its exploration here feels heartbreakingly genuine. Interlaced with these scenes come flashes of the relationship between Emma and her mother. These moments are achingly tender and tug on the heartstrings to the point that tissues may be needed. Emma’s mother isn’t perfect; there are threads of depression that fly over the young girl’s head. As William Makepeace Thackeray said, ‘mother is the name of God in the lips and heart of little children’, and this quote is personified perfectly here. Emma can’t see her mother’s imperfections as she is the moon.
Moon Garden is an emotive, almost lyrical work of fiction. This is a film drowning in its feelings and as such it wallops the viewer with a powerful gut punch. The sort of movie that tissues were made for, Moon Garden will reduce audiences to tears. Whether it’s from the dark beauty of the visuals, the haunting chords of the score, or the real concepts and situations that it is exploring, Moon Garden will wrench the scab off of any unhealed emotional wounds. A cathartic viewing experience that will leave you yearning for a cuddle from loved ones, Moon Garden transcends film to become something extremely affecting.
Moon Garden
Summary
Whilst Moon Garden’s visuals are chilling enough to incite nightmares, the emotional weight hits like a sledgehammer. The combination of the two ensure this is a film that will linger on in your mind. Mad God with a pounding, bleeding emotional heart, Moon Garden is an unforgettable experience.
Moon Garden was reviewed at Grimmfest 2022.
