Moon Garden

After suffering a head injury, a small girl lies in a coma and her subsequent story is intertwined with her journey through a fantasy world in which she repeatedly escapes death and encounters various other creatures. The result is a surrealistic variation on Alice in Wonderland that was made by the father of the five-year-old girl in the lead role as his own original project over the course of six years. It is necessary to appreciate the film for its well-thought-out creative side and the rendering of the puppet animation sequences, which must have required a tremendous amount of hard work. The child actress in the lead role is excellent. The style of the animation and the dark atmosphere of Moon Garden are reminiscent of Mad God (though it isn’t as bloody and disgusting, but I still wouldn’t let children watch it, as some of the scenes are truly terrifying and intense). Unfortunately, it also shares with Mad God the fact that the viewer gets fed up with this load of visual ideas after a while, because there isn’t much else to rely on in the simple plot. The film will thus most likely remain in the viewer’s memory only as a likably bizarre sequence of psychedelic scenes interspersed with a hospitalised little girl’s recollections of both happy and agonising family moments. (09.10.2023)

I did not enjoy it at all. It was sold as Steampunk, stop-motion, surreal horror fantasy, all of which sounded attractive, but the final product is uninteresting to the point of woe. Mostly I felt that it was perhaps not even a horror film (the gore is only in the imagination of the viewer). The film is about a young girl who falls down the stairs and we watch what goes on in her head before she comes to consciousness. The concept is fine, some of the visual ideas were interesting too, even the bad guy had something going for him, but it couldn't hold my attention. Also, it felt a bit like a horror movie for kids. It might find its fans though. 4/10. (30.08.2023)