Stars: Jessica Alexander, Anja Taljaard, Hilton Pelser, Adrienne Pearce, Kitty Harris, Brent Vermeulen | Written by Kelsey Egan, Emma Lungiswa de Wet | Directed by Kelsey Egan
A brand-new post-apocalyptic gothic sci-fi melodrama from South Africa, Glasshouse is one of a growing number of genre films to stem from the country, yet one that is not really known for its genre output but one whose culture and landscape are just rife with terrifying possibilities. The film stars British actress Jessica Alexander (the upcoming live-action remake of The Little Mermaid) and newcomer Anja Taljaard as the sisters, Bee and Evie, opposite Hilton Pelser as The Stranger.
Glasshouse is set after The Shred, an airborne dementia, has left humanity roaming like lost and dangerous animals, unable to remember who they are. Confined to their airtight glasshouse, a family does what they must to survive – until the sisters are seduced by a stranger who upsets the family’s rituals,...
A brand-new post-apocalyptic gothic sci-fi melodrama from South Africa, Glasshouse is one of a growing number of genre films to stem from the country, yet one that is not really known for its genre output but one whose culture and landscape are just rife with terrifying possibilities. The film stars British actress Jessica Alexander (the upcoming live-action remake of The Little Mermaid) and newcomer Anja Taljaard as the sisters, Bee and Evie, opposite Hilton Pelser as The Stranger.
Glasshouse is set after The Shred, an airborne dementia, has left humanity roaming like lost and dangerous animals, unable to remember who they are. Confined to their airtight glasshouse, a family does what they must to survive – until the sisters are seduced by a stranger who upsets the family’s rituals,...
- 3/8/2022
- by Phil Wheat
- Nerdly
A mother and her daughters hole up in a Victorian conservatory, hiding from a devastating pandemic that lays waste to human memory
Shot in a Victorian hothouse in South Africa with a mixed cast of local actors and the odd imported Brit – including Jessica Alexander, soon be seen in Disney’s live-action The Little Mermaid – this tense dystopian horror-thriller feels geographically non-specific, almost as if it were taking place in some kind of dream world. That touch of hazy vagueness is just right for Sa director and co-writer Kelsey Egan’s cracking feature debut (co-written with Emma Lungiswa De Wet) which imagines a family of survivors hiding out in the title’s botanical conservatory after a pandemic has ravaged most of the world’s population.
The invisible threat here is an airborne virus called “the shred” which wipes out memories and leaves its victims in a bestial state, unable to remember even their own names.
Shot in a Victorian hothouse in South Africa with a mixed cast of local actors and the odd imported Brit – including Jessica Alexander, soon be seen in Disney’s live-action The Little Mermaid – this tense dystopian horror-thriller feels geographically non-specific, almost as if it were taking place in some kind of dream world. That touch of hazy vagueness is just right for Sa director and co-writer Kelsey Egan’s cracking feature debut (co-written with Emma Lungiswa De Wet) which imagines a family of survivors hiding out in the title’s botanical conservatory after a pandemic has ravaged most of the world’s population.
The invisible threat here is an airborne virus called “the shred” which wipes out memories and leaves its victims in a bestial state, unable to remember even their own names.
- 1/31/2022
- by Leslie Felperin
- The Guardian - Film News
In total isolation, as a pandemic turns the world upside down, a house of glass rises mysteriously out of the mist and forest. Inside, a small family lives in lonely confinement, tending the plants growing within the greenhouse that protect them from the toxic air. Outside the safety of their airtight glasshouse, an airborne neurochemical shreds the memories of its victims. Mother teaches her children the simple laws of their sanctuary and how to preserve precious memories through rituals. Daughters Evie and Bee are two girls on the cusp of womanhood in a strange and violent world—one is dedicated to memory and the other wishes to forget. Together with Mother, Evie and Bee are caring for innocents Gabe and Daisy when a seductive stranger disturbs the tranquility of their sanctuary.
Glasshouse hits a rich yet complex chord in its marriage of folk horror, Gothic storytelling, and vintage science with...
Glasshouse hits a rich yet complex chord in its marriage of folk horror, Gothic storytelling, and vintage science with...
- 8/17/2021
- by Caitlin Kennedy
- DailyDead
“Our memory is a more perfect world than the universe,” wrote Guy de Maupassant. “It gives back life to those who no longer exist.”
The world as we know it no longer exists in Kelsey Egan’s melancholy début feature. We drift down across a scorched white desert to find the glasshouse, adrift in a little island of green, set apart from the world and seemingly adrift in time. There, mother (a magnificently coiffured Adrienne Pearce) presides over her tight-knit family unit: older girls Bea (Jessica Alexander) and Evie (Anja Taljaard); young Daisy (Kitty Harris) and boy Gabe (Brent Vermeulen). The latter struggles with a significant cognitive disability caused by early childhood exposure to the airborne pathogen known as the Shred, which damages the memory. As we get to know this family, however, we will learn that Gabe’s difficulties do not mean he’s unintelligent – indeed, he sometimes understands what’s going on.
The world as we know it no longer exists in Kelsey Egan’s melancholy début feature. We drift down across a scorched white desert to find the glasshouse, adrift in a little island of green, set apart from the world and seemingly adrift in time. There, mother (a magnificently coiffured Adrienne Pearce) presides over her tight-knit family unit: older girls Bea (Jessica Alexander) and Evie (Anja Taljaard); young Daisy (Kitty Harris) and boy Gabe (Brent Vermeulen). The latter struggles with a significant cognitive disability caused by early childhood exposure to the airborne pathogen known as the Shred, which damages the memory. As we get to know this family, however, we will learn that Gabe’s difficulties do not mean he’s unintelligent – indeed, he sometimes understands what’s going on.
- 8/16/2021
- by Jennie Kermode
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
"When the real world comes knocking, you won't last two minutes, bro." Altered Innocence has debuted an official Us trailer for a South African drama titled The Harvesters, also known as Die Stropers (which translates directly to The Poachers) in Afrikaans. This premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last year, and is getting a small theatrical release this fall. Brent Vermeulen plays a boy named Janno. He is "different, secretive, emotionally frail." One day his mother, fiercely religious, brings home Pieter, a hardened street orphan she wants to save, and asks Janno to make this stranger into his brother. The two start a fight for power, heritage and parental love. The cast includes Alex van Dyk, Juliana Venter, and Morné Visser. From Cannes' Un Certain Regard, "Kallos' debut feature film explores teenage angst and family dynamics set against a harsh yet stunning South African backdrop." Reminds me of God's Own Country in many ways.
- 7/26/2019
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
“Afrikaners is plesierig, dit can julle glo,” runs the chorus of the rustiest chestnut in Afrikaans folk music. It isn’t heard, much less proven, in “The Harvesters,” South African writer-director Etienne Kallos’ muscular, mood-rich debut feature. Unusual within the annals of its national cinema for its searching examination of the country’s once-dominant, now-dwindling white Afrikaner population, this sternly moving, vividly shot rural drama draws quasi-Biblical resonance from its tale of teenage foster brothers locked in a familial and cultural power struggle on a remote farmstead. That a low-key queer undercurrent courses through the conflict somewhat broadens the festival and distribution prospects of the film, the fine social divisions of which will nonetheless be unfamiliar to many outside viewers; in a Cannes edition heavy on auspicious debuts, this is among the most excitingly complete.
It says much about the out-of-time nature of life in the Bible belt of South...
It says much about the out-of-time nature of life in the Bible belt of South...
- 5/15/2018
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
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