Between the Reels

The haunted house is a popular trope in the world of horror, warping the friendly nature of the family dwelling into a place of uncanny supernatural energy where theoretically, the home no longer becomes a home. Playing into this successfully exploited phenomenon is Adam Gierasch’s Fertile Ground, most recently seen this year at the After Dark Original Horrorfest Weekend.

The plot follows the plight of the Weavers, a married couple from the city who, after suffering a tragic miscarriage and the resulting infertility of the wife, move to a country farmhouse to set up a new life for themselves. Of course, any house that is secluded to such a degree and has a strange resemblance to a certain Bates Motel, will clearly be rife with a ghost or two, and once moved in the inevitable strange goings-on commence. As Nate Weaver becomes caught up in his artistic career, his wife Emily finds herself laden with the usual ghostly horror movie fare; skeletons, crying children, ghostly apparitions and mysterious human hand prints.

While the haunted house aspects of the narrative are old hat, the interesting elements of the plot revolve around Emily and her failed pregnancy. After being diagnosed infertile, it comes as a shock when she finds herself pregnant again once they have moved onto the new land. It is here that the interesting components of the story weave their way in to offer a new angle on the sub-genre. Instead of the threat of the film being limited to the haunted house, another danger is found with the mysterious pregnancy, the haunting and the pregnancy having odd parallels. Each entity, the house and Emily’s womb, are caught up in a cycle and just as the idea of one’s home becoming uncontrollable and sinister, the same idea can be placed upon Emily’s anatomy, the two becoming intertwining paradoxes with Emily Weaver caught in a frantic limbo between the two.

Unsurprisingly, this does not have a particularly positive effect on the poor woman, and as events spiral out of her control and her husband grows distant from her and their situation, the film concludes in a rather abrupt finale which takes an entertainingly skewed stance on what could have been just another boring conclusion of dominant possessed husband attacks unstable housewife.

While the plot gives the film a positive backbone, a few additions to Gierasch’s horror let it down somewhat. While they may be cosmetic elements, the costume design and the soundtrack do come across as amateurish which could simply be a result of the low budget nature of the film. One component that could have been avoided however is the odd inclusion of title cards which break up the film and unfortunately only add to the sometimes amateurish nature.

Blending influences from classics such as The Shining, Rosemary’s Baby and The Amityville Horror, Fertile Ground does still manage to hold its own. This is mainly due to the added pregnancy plot that manages to build upon the idea of creating an unsettling atmosphere by making not just the house, but also one’s own body, a place of eerie distrust.

3/5