Written for RAF News February 2020

Renegade botanist Alice (Emily Beecham) cuts some corners when engineering a strain of ‘happy plant’, a small household Lorax tree that is said to have an anti-depressant affect on humans. This may be the intention, but it is not quite the result.

Before it can be properly tested, under pressure to have the species ready for the science fair, it’s production is rolled out en masse in the lab, not before she nabs one for her teenage son Joe (Kit Connor), whom she will name the plant after.

Alice has a testing relationship with her son, a single-mother dedicating most of her time to work, she seems to reserve her motherly qualities for her plant life. Meanwhile Joe is at that point of puberty in which he is throwing caution to the wind in pursuit of a girl.

The subtext here on the nature of mothering, the difficulties of attachment with a child who is becoming an individual, is established loud and clear, much like the more horror-like elements of the film. It has all the makings of a Twilight Zone or Black Mirror episode but filled out with unnecessary B movie exposition. Although the film communicates a lot visually, the menace of the writhing plants, the transformative power of it’s pollen, it is all made explicit in dialogue after the fact.

Despite it’s alluring aesthetic, with a prominent colour palette and minimal design, this Little Joe of Horrors has all the baggy technical parts of a science-fiction thriller and lacks the pay off. It begins with a sense of unease, but then it doesn’t give the audience a chance to think for themselves, to guess at what might be happening, or to even be confused – it explains everything, twice.