Regular visitors to this site have heard (well, read) me mention that I rarely get to the movie theater. That changed recently, as I've seen Insidious twice. Have you seen this movie? I'll save my gushing for the eventual home video review, but suffice it to say that this movie not only renewed my faith in American horror films, but it also proved that someone out there still knows how to make a good haunted house movie. This is one of my favorite genres, and its sorely ignored in favor of slasher movies and torture porn. While Insidious is a prime example of a good haunted house movie, Fertile Ground shows that not everyone has mastered this sub-genre.

Fertile Ground introduces us to Nate (Gale Harold) and Emily Weaver (Leisha Hailey), a couple who live in the city. Nate is an artist and Emily is a fashion designer, and they are both very excited about the fact that Emily is pregnant with their first child. However, this excitement turn to sorrow when Emily has a miscarriage. To help with the grief, Nate moves them to the country to an ancestral home. Nate plans to work on his art there, and he hopes that the quiet will allow Emily to work through the pain. Not long after moving in, Emily finds an old trunk which belonged to Nate's ancestors. Following this, a skull is found on the property. This leads Emily to look into the house's history, and she learns that there have been several murders on the property over the years. During this time, Nate spends more and more time in his studio and often leaves Emily at home alone to travel to the city. Emily begins to see a bloody woman in the house, and she becomes convinced that the house is haunted.

Fertile Ground shows that they haven't gotten any better at their craft, as the movie fails on nearly every front. The first problem is the cliche-ridden script. Couple loses child (here an unborn child) and decides to move to the country to get over it. Seen it. Distraught and depressed woman begins to see things. Seen it. Husband becomes "possessed" by ancestor and becomes temperamental. Seen it. There isn't one moment in this movie that I haven't seen in other movies. The movie sets up a plot which tells us that, based on the history of the house, Emily is going to die. But then, someone else dies. I think that this was supposed to be shocking, but we're not told why this particular characters dies, and we're not told exactly how it happens. So, the movie sets up its own set of rules, and then can't remember to follow them.

This is further complicated by the fact that the movie takes all of these unoriginal and jumbled ideas and does nothing with them. Fertile Ground is incredibly slow and boring, as nothing ever happen. Emily frets and Nate stomps back and forth to his studio, but we don't get much ghost action. Every now and then, the ghost will appear, but she is quite lackluster, so these scenes have little impact. Honestly, the bulk of the film is simply scenes of Emily wandering around the house, or looking of out of windows, or sleeping. You would think that as some point Leisha Hailey would have said, "Is Emily going to do anything?" And one more thing -- I can only imagine that Composer Joseph Conlan has pictures of Gierasch and Anderson doing something which they shouldn't, as the music in the film is too loud and non-stop from the outset. Every scene has way too much music and it usually doesn't fit the mood of the scene.

Fertile Ground set up the intercom gag way too early on DVD courtesy of Lionsgate. The film has been letterboxed at 1.78:1 and the transfer is enhanced for 16 x 9 TVs. The image is sharp and clear, showing no overt grain and no defects from the source material. The movie is never overly dark or bright and the colors look good. The picture has a very nice crispness to it, allowing for fairly good depth. Artifacting and noise are kept to a minimum. The DVD carries a Dolby Digital 5.1 track which provides clear dialogue and sound effects. As noted above, the music is loud here. It never overpowers the dialogue, but it's not afraid to let you know that it's there. The surround sound effects are pretty good, but the mix could have done more with sounds in the house. We do get some well-placed stereo effects when things are happening off-screen.

The Fertile Ground DVD contains only two extras. The first is an AUDIO COMMENTARY with Writer/Director Adam Gierasch, Writer Jace Anderson, and actress Leisha Hailey. The other extra is a STORYBOARD GALLERY (2 1/2 minutes), which shows successive boards for a specific scene.