Oof. The Gardener is bad. And not in a fun way. Check out this plot - it's literally the best I could find from a half-dozen sites, and it's still bad: A strange man grows odd plants for a wealthy American woman in South America. The plants begin to emit deadly fumes! It seems that all of his previous employers have died mysteriously. What happens to him in the end is very bizarre. (Thanks terribly written Amazon plot summary!) Usually, with a plot like that, you can bank on some enjoyable weirdness or at least some entertaining surreal badness. But there's none of that here. The Gardener just drags... and drags... and drags with very little to offer. It's exasperating. I think I was checking the remaining runtime on this more than I have for any film in recent memory. It's just plain rough to watch.
That plot summary kind of sums it up. I watched the extras and actress Katherine Houghton - playing Ellen, the wealthy woman who hires the titular gardner - summed up her interest in the film by saying there was some good class tension in the script. And I guess it's kind of there... her and her husband are elite, rich, white folks living in a gated mansion in Brazil (actually filmed in Puerto Rico), with numerous servants and what not. But really, other than one scene where she's driving through a poor part of town, the class theme never really makes it through. (To be fair, Houghton says as much in the interview.) Basically you just sit there waiting for some plants to kill people (which happens about one-half of one time), and it seems like the filmmakers don't care about class tension *or* plant action.
