GamerTab That was an excellent one.

BoardChiri Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Woodyanders A dejected little boy (an effective performance by Richard White) who suffers at the hands of his monstrously abusive parents (portrayed with startling ferocity by Robert Chadwick and Virginia Maitland) plants some weird seeds in order to grow himself a caring and nurturing grandmother (sweetly played by Dorothy McGinnis).Naturally, this spooky and unsettling early short by David Lynch doesn't have much in the way of a coherent story (the whole thing unfolds like a child's bad dream complete with evil adults who bark like dogs and even crawl around on all fours), but nonetheless still makes a strong impression due to its surreal brooding atmosphere, striking wealth of bizarre visuals, inspired use of jarring sound effects that really add to the overall nightmarish mood, occasional bits of funky stylized animation, and the way the narrative works as a loopy meditation on birth, life, and death with a poignant central point on the basic human need to feel loved and accepted. Worth a watch for fans of challenging outre fare.

Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) Let me start by saying that I'm certainly not the greatest David Lynch fan under the sun, especially not when it comes to his very early short films, so my expectations weren't too high to begin with. In the end, it was pretty much what I expected. As weird and surreal as always, with a couple good scenes, but as a whole rather underwhelming. It's Lynch's third film and definitely far superior at least to his first about several men getting sick. The story has some heart when a boy who gets abused verbally and physically by his parents plants a seed that grows into a caring grandmother, who smiles at the little one and gives him the emotional security he's been looking for.Occasionally it's an interesting mix of live action and animation and I liked the contrast between the B&W-scenes and the several shades of red, mostly related to blood. It started dragging a bit near the 25-minute mark, so I'm not sure the quite long running time was justified for the script, but I can't deny that some factors made it interesting again by adding general weirdness like the decent make-up work or the music, especially the song "You are my best friend." Nonetheless, while it's probably a feast for Lynch lovers, for me it was okay at best and certainly not eye-opening to his work.

Polaris_DiB Okay. Basically I have only one major thematic element I can really comment on.In this short, Lynch seems to be particularly keen on dehumanizing humanity in every sense of the word. First, they characters are grown as plants, and they germinate (?) children rather than birth them. Then they're animals, both in personality and actions. Beyond just barking and snuffling and whining like dogs (Matt! Matt! Matt!), the way they treat each other is very abusive and inhuman.So then what's this whole thing about the grandmother? Is she supposed to be more human because of the love she shares with Matt? That's the reading that's readily apparent, but it doesn't really work out like that. If she was human, why is she a teakettle? Why does she birth, literally, from a tree? The short goes to levels that are hard to really comprehend.Which is fine. Fully comprehending a Lynch film isn't really the point.However, I would like to mention that this short has some of the strongest imagery, in a sense, of Lynch's career. The shots especially of the staircase just scream art even though they really aren't that particularly stylistic as compared to a lot of what else he's done. This is a much more aesthetically intriguing world, this short.--PolarisDiB

Michael_Cronin Long-time Lynch collaborator Jack Nance once said that watching The Grandmother was like spending half an hour in the electric chair. Mixing live action (both colour and black & white) with animation, along with a dark & unsettling soundscape created by Alan Splet (still Lynch's sound designer today, three decades later), the film is an intensely disturbing experience.The Grandmother deals with the story of a boy, abused by his brutal, animal-like parents, who grows himself a kindly grandmother in the attic. Although it does suffer from a certain 'student film' feeling, this half-hour short is a must-see for all fans of David Lynch, particularly those who admire the stark & surreal world of Eraserhead. One can definitely see the genesis of Lynch's next film within it.