- Director: Sebastian Gutierrez
- Writer: Sebastian Gutierrez
- Stars: Abbey Lee, Ciarán Hinds, Carla Gugino
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 48 Minutes
Synopsis
Elizabeth and Henry are newlyweds. He’s an older billionaire, and she’s young. He carries her over the threshold in their extremely modern mountain home. Credits roll.
Claire and Oliver, the servants, are introduced. Elizabeth quickly learns that Oliver is blind. He shows her around the huge house, and everything seems like a princesses’ fantasy. Every door seems to be accessible with a code. There’s only one room she’s forbidden to go in. “Everything is yours except this one. This one room is off limits.”
Henry has to go into town the next day, leaving Elizabeth all alone. She admires his Nobel prize mounted on the wall, and she wonders why Henry would want a simple girl like her. She entertains herself all day and watches that evening as the servants leave her in the house alone. She goes wandering, and stops outside the forbidden door.
Later that night, she wakes up and goes straight down there. She opens the door and goes inside. She sees a row of refrigerated tanks with people inside. She runs back to her room, terrified.
The next day Henry is friendly, but Elizabeth is suddenly afraid of him. They have sex, but she’s not that interested. Henry soon figures out that Elizabeth saw the room, so he comes after her with a machete. She hides, but he finds her and hacks her to little pieces. Henry and the servants bury the pieces the next morning, and then go inside for breakfast.
Claire thinks Henry wants to get caught. This clearly wasn’t the first time. Claire loves Henry, and Oliver has a big crush on Claire.
Logan, a detective, comes by later that day. He asks about Elizabeth, and Henry says she’s taking a nap.
Six weeks later…
Elizabeth and Henry are newlyweds. He’s an older billionaire, and she’s young. He carries her over the threshold in their extremely modern mountain home. He’s been growing clones in his lab. The same, almost word-for-word routine from the earlier scenes play out again, this time with a brand-new Elizabeth. Henry has to go to work the next day, and everything plays out exactly the same, except this time, the “raw” clone in the lab wakes up early and gets out without anyone seeing her.
The next day Henry is friendly, but Elizabeth is suddenly afraid of him. Henry explains that once you learn how a person will behave, you can learn how to control them. This is all some kind of psychological experiment for him. This time, Elizabeth stabs him in the back before he gets her.
She still can’t get out of the secure house, so she sets about cleaning up the blood and mess. Oliver and Claire are surprised to see her in the morning. Claire has a heart attack and the ambulance comes to take her away. Oliver says he will help Elizabeth with Henry’s body. Oliver explains that she’s the fifth Elizabeth in the “Elizabeth Harvest.”
Logan shows up, and meets Elizabeth for the first time. He got her 911 call earlier today, but they explain it away, saying that it was Claire calling during her heart attack. He seems to be completely falling for the story when Oliver shoots him in the back. Turns out that Logan was in on everything and assisted Henry.
Oliver admits that he’s Henry’s son, and then gives Elizabeth a bagful of money, but he wants her to read Claire’s journal and tell him what it says. Then he locks her in the bedroom; she’s a prisoner again. She reads Claire’s journal, and we go back into Claire’s story from five years ago…
Claire was a scientist who was hired to help Henry in his illegal and unethical research. Can she crack the genetic mutation code? The original Elizabeth died while giving birth to Oliver, and Henry had great difficulties in cloning her. It all just gets more and more complicated…
Commentary
Why did they bury the previous Elizabeths when they have a perfectly functioning crematorium in the backyard?
Elizabeth acts shell-shocked and strange from the very first scene, so we know that something’s a little off with her right away. Except that’s really just the tip of the iceberg with the weirdness here. There are twists after twists in this one. I don’t know when I was expecting, but this wasn’t it.
It’s a slow-paced, character-driven film, but a lot happens. I think it might have been a little too long. I think the whole segment when we get Claire’s story could have been removed and the important bits explained elsewhere. Overall, though, it was good- there was always one more twist.