Spidersecu Don't Believe the Hype

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Glucedee It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

Brendon Jones It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

JLRVancouver David Lynch brings us an unsettling vision of a bed-wetting boy, his abusive parents, and the grandmother that he grows from a seed. The film, which toggles between live action and animation (reminiscent of Terry Gilliam), is dark, organic and surreal, especially when the 'grandmother seed' germinates into a spiky, phallic mushroom, growing from a pile of dirt centered on an old-fashioned bed. Reversing normal progression, the grandmother is pulled from the womb, fully dressed, by the child, who then engages in revenge fantasies against his parents following an incredibly unappetizing dinner scene. Best watched at night, in the dark for full effect, "The Grandmother" is a series of strange, and sometimes unpleasant, images strung together by the barest of stories. Not for all tastes but a must for fans of Lynch or of experimental filmmaking in general. My ranking is based on neither really liking nor really disliking the film, but probably not really 'getting it' either. Maybe you will...

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.

Dan Keene I first saw this on the "Short Films of David Lynch" DVD a while back, and I was just as fascinated with this early effort as I was with his later work. In fact, I think this was the point that David Lynch's style became more defined in the direction of dark surrealism that only he can devise. Others may try the same kind of style, and some do very well indeed, but this film is indeed a signature that would leave a mark on the rest of his career. The imagery and atmosphere in the setting has a kind of nightmarish ambiance about it; not the kind of "scary" that makes you jump, but more like a domesticated hell. And the animated sequences just might pop up in your memory as you try to go to sleep for the night. Of course I realize that David Lynch might be an acquired taste, but anyone who has a knack for "getting that weird feeling" from watching a movie, then I suggest this short classic (classic in my book anyway).

Ben Parker One of the most disturbing things i've ever seen. The actors in this film, David Lynch's third film technically, but his first narrative film, were never in any other movies - one of them, Father, died a few years ago - it is as if they exist only in the frightening nightmare world of this boy's life, which consists of two dog-like parents who only bark at him with unintelligible sounds, and beat him and rub his face in the urine when he wets the bed, like a puppy. The subject of the film (and if i don't tell you this, it'll make so little sense to you, because its never properly explained in the film) is the boy has no love from his parents, and no grandmother to give him respite from them and comfort him, so he grows one in the attic.It is a horrifying, brilliant film, which creates an imaginative world very successfully - albeit one you desparately want to escape from as soon as possible, but it does this well at least.The Lynchian oeuvre is almost fully formed here, right from the start. Little dialogue, atmospheric soundtrack of constant sound effects which you find in Eraserhead, Elephant Man, Lost Highway and Mulholland Dr; impressionistic approach to performance and makeup/costume and sets; the quality of estrangement in the direction, and most importantly there is the union of terrible, twisted darkness and optimistic naivety (developed to the full in Blue Velvet and Mulholland Dr).For Lynch fans, this is a thing to see. Unlike Six Men Getting Sick or The Amputee, this is not just an experiment or an early film of a Director that ruins your impression of them, it stands on its own, irrespective of Lynch's subsequent work (though it also sets the tone for his subsequent narrative work) as a great surrealist/impressionist narrative short.