Harvey (2002) User Reviews

evocative...

[showpony · 7/10 · 13 May 2002]

Harvey is an evocative short, probably not as scary as it could have been, but certainly dark, atmospheric.

Harvey (Nicholas Hope; who once played Bubby, from Bad Boy Bubby) plays the eponymous character, a neurotic mess of a man, huddled in his apartment, for no apparent reason. Caressing the keyhole, his eye is drawn to a neighbor. They meet and eventually merge. It's Dead Ringers without a scalpel. Chang and Eng sans brotherly love.

Harvey isn't at all about Siamese Twins, I digress. It's a short about the merging of two dissimilar bodies; a mirror-image accident of fate well-versed in digital effects. What can I say, without giving away the ten minute narrative?

Keep your needle and thread at home.

Loss of potential

[Goarchia · 7/10 · 28 March 2022]

Very foreign film at 1st, but also very symbolic when I think about it. I believe that the film would have gained more popularity if it had been a longer film, and not a short 1.

It is about a man who has half a body, in the literal sense of the word. He searches for his half, where he finds it, quite by accident - in a girl. In that half of that girl, he tries to find peace and happiness through the most basic human actions, as well as through making love.

Unfortunately, none of that worked 4 him, where he himself gave up on that idea. He returned half of the girl to the girl and continued to live such a lonely life.

This short film can be a depiction of people in their entirety. People are mostly looking 4 love, 4 the other half because they don't feel fulfilled. The only truth is that if they do not feel fulfilled and whole with themselves, they will not succeed with another person, they will even feel more and more empty. We are whole, not half.

The person who enters our lives should be a bonus, not a supplement 2 our lack of self!

A solid film, which I believe would be much better as a finished project, where we would get answers 2 some questions, at least as far as the beginning is concerned - how it came about that a man was left without his half.

A deep symbolic movie, that follows no conventional narrative structure...

[OrdinaryDay · 7/10 · 16 March 2003]

..and challenges the viewer to think about the meaning after viewing this challenging, poignant movie. I recently met Justin Mcmahon, the sound engineer for this movie, and he showed me this film and asked my opinion on it. I believe that it is a metaphor for lost love, and how we are essentially incomplete when we do not have our other half with us. He said I may be reading too much into this film, and maybe I should just view it as the pseudo-reality head trip he thinks it is.

This movie can be whatever you want it to be, but it is very, very disturbing! Dark, morbid and depressing, it is definately not for everyone.

Gruesome, spellbinding, the best of ZeD

[gizmomogwai · 9/10 · 19 September 2010]

From 2002 to 2006 there existed one of the greatest TV shows of all time. It was CBC's ZeD, a collection of short films, music, poetry, art and so on from Canada and around the world. They had fun Halloween specials, but on one night after Halloween, for no apparent reason, they hit their audience with a series of stuff considered too disturbing for Halloween. Too disturbing for Halloween! This was my favourite episode partly for the short films Kitchen Sink (1989) and Harvey (2001). Between the two of them, I'd give the edge to Harvey as being the best short film I've seen.

Harvey is a dark work of art from Australia. It depicts a man with a whole side of his head and body missing, who abducts a woman from a neighbouring apartment, cuts her in half and sews her to himself. For the woman, one can well imagine, it's a horrifying experience. Eventually Harvey himself realizes it won't work, and he sets her free.

Reading other reviews, the good special effects have been noted, and someone offered the interpretation that the film is commenting on how a man who lost love wants to be whole again. These are probably valid assessments, but one can also see Harvey as a nightmare, as a comment on the horrors of slavery (Harvey thought he could possess this woman but realized afterwards that he couldn't), as a tale of loneliness or as a story about redemption and sympathy for the devil. Certainly the look of the woman's face at the end shows she has some understanding of the man who cut her up, leaving a scar on her face after she was put back together (nice touch). Normally with all movies I like dialogue, but with this and Kitchen Sink there was very little, and the movies possessed power anyway. (There is so little talking in Harvey that indeed, one might not be able to guess the movie is Australian).

This movie may be disturbing, but it doesn't achieve this through tastelessness. We don't see a lot of blood flowing when Harvey cuts the woman up (in fact, we don't see the cutting up, period). We can see the female's pubic hair in the shower scene but it's not pornographic (the black and white helps). Harvey is gruesome largely in concept, though also it was adept in execution. Winner of two awards at the Asia-Pacific Film Festival and Palm Springs International ShortFest.

I look for no deeper meaning or symbolism--it's just one really, really amazing and weird film!

[planktonrules · 8/10 · 7 June 2008]

ALERT--This film is NOT for children or those easily disturbed. There is a lot of nudity and sexuality, but the biggest concern is the graphic and possibly stomach turning nature of the film. There are MANY scenes of semi-eviscerated people and images that are among the most frightening I have ever seen on film. DON'T watch this film unless you know you can handle this. I am NOT kidding.

This is a bizarre film that doesn't use dialog. While one reviewer talks on and on about symbolism (which may or may not be intended), I looked at it from a much more superficial view and didn't particularly care about any symbolism! What was more important to me was how incredibly scary it all was as well as wondering HOW they made these scenes--they are amazing.

A woman is in the shower when a man stumbles into the room asking for help. When he turns, the outer covering of an entire half of his body is missing! The woman, naturally being scared, slips and falls--knocking herself out in the process. When she comes to, half of her body is now stapled onto his and both bodies are fighting for control of the whole. It's very disturbing and gross and NOT for the easily frightened. While I did NOT particularly like this sick looking film, I still must give it high marks for being disturbing and having amazing special effects. In many ways, this reminds me of another short film, HALF A MAN, but the graphics are light-years better than HALF A MAN and HARVEY is meant to be much more disturbing.

Simply amazing.