Fertile Ground: A Moving Story (slash!) Halloween Movie Review

When Daphne and I were thinking about moving a couple of years ago, we were on the hunt for a Victorian-styled farmhouse. One place we seriously considered was located on an acreage just outside of Sheldahl, IA - about 22 miles from Des Moines. It had a newly updated kitchen, updated bathrooms, and wooden pocket doors. Below your feet were original hardwood floors and above your head were ceiling medallions and crown moldings. It felt perfect.

 Here's the front of the house:

Check out the gingerbread and the siding:

Wait! Why is that person jumping out of that window, and how did I get a picture of it? 

Turns out the house had been a location for the direct-to-DVD horror movie Fertile Ground (2011). The pictures in this email are screen shots taken from the movie's trailer. Normally I'd post a link, but the trailer is rated R for blood, nudity, and overacting.

Now we know why rubber mats were stapled to the porch's roof. The killer needed secure footing.

This also explains why we found, in a corner of the basement, a large wooden cross with a Blair Witch thingamajig hanging from it (hard to see, but it's on the left):

Fertile Ground's plot line: "Emily and Nate Weaver leave the city for the rural comfort of Nate's family home in New Hampshire. There, isolated and haunted by strange noises and horrifying visions, Emily learns she's pregnant while Nate is possessed by the homicidal spirit of his forefathers. In a house haunted by past victims, Emily learns that she's the latest target in a murderous tradition."

Umm, moving an expectant woman from the city to an isolated farm house? That hit a little too close to home for Daphne who was also pregnant at the time.

I'm a huge fan of horror movies, and you might think I'd jump at the chance to own a house that starred in one, but like getting close to a Hollywood prop, this place wasn't as nice as we first thought. The hard wood floors were only finished where the rugs didn't cover; the rest of the flooring consisted of plywood and bent nails. The ceiling moldings were new and probably made of Styrofoam. The water pressure couldn't support the new seven head shower. Every new appliance in the kitchen was a dented floor model. And one of the toilet bowls was filled with floating, dead boxelder bugs. That seemed ominous. Outside, you could put your foot through many of the porch's floorboards.

But couldn't those things be fixed? We thought so. Once you have dreamed yourself into a house, it's hard to shake yourself awake. 

But then Daphne watched Fertile Ground with me, and that was like getting a bucket of cold water dumped on her. Of course the main similarity is that the fictional movie and our fictional moving took place at the same house. But there were enough parallels between our own real lives and that of the movie's couple to be surreal.

It's true, the plot line involving moving a pregnant woman from the city to the country touched a nerve, and both couples, real and imagined, were also pregnant with baby girls. Although the movie couple miscarried (no way would I have let Daph watch that part), they were going to name their little girl Ruth. We considered Ruth as a name for our girl, as it's Daphne's Grandma's first name.

Although we didn't move into the house, we spent the better part of three hours walking around the property discussing where our belongings would go if we did. Watching the onscreen couple do that same thing gave us a sense of déjà vu, especially seeing the empty, "Two Men and A Truck" truck pull away from the acreage. We've used that moving company three times.

Seeing movie props that we had physically handled, like the wood grave marker, strengthened the feeling of connection, "Oh yeah, I forgot 'Our Beloved Child' was carved into the cross." We could also see differences in the background of scenes. For instance, when a killer ghost is standing with an axe in a haunted kitchen, I don't usually notice that it's standing next to a different microwave than what's there now.

Neither of us look like actors, but there are some similarities. I'm only eight days older than the movie husband, Gale Taylor, and although he's taller and better looking, we sometimes share the same beard:

For comparison, Leisha Hailey played the movie wife/ mother:

Was the movie scary? When Fertile Ground was over, Daphne asked me to walk with her to the basement to "help" get the laundry... first time that's happened. I think it was the mixture of impending doom and familiarity that really spooked her: here's a place she's acquainted with, and now it's being splattered with blood. "Oh, I'm so glad we didn't buy that house.", "Oh, I'm soooo glad we don't live there!", and "Oh my gosh! I couldn't ever live in that house!!" were common exclamations. 

I found the movie itself to be slow and predictable, but I had a blast vicariously moving into our haunted house. Overall, I rate Fertile Ground a 7 out of 10 for me, and a 2 out of 10 for anyone else. Daphne might give it a 1, but I doubt that. 

When we made a list of what we were looking for while house shopping this year, Daphne put "No Horror Movie Houses!" in her top five.