Exclusive 'Little Joe' Clip: This Pretty Plant Is About To Create Some Trouble
Little Shop of Horrors gave us a man-eating venus fly trap, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes delivered exactly what the title promised, and The Happening had trees that made people want to kill themselves. Now, director Jessica Hausner is giving us a new deadly plant to fear in a haunting thriller called Little Joe. We've got an exclusive clip that ominously introduces us to the little red bud that slowly starts to wreak havoc on a young woman's life and son. Watch the Little Joe clip below.
Little Joe Clip
The plant in question is a genetically engineered flower that has been designed to make its owner happy, as long as its kept in the proper temperature, fed regularly, and even spoken to. In a performance that earned an award at Cannes, Emily Beecham plays Alice, the plant breeder in charge of the specimen, and against company rules, she's brought one home for her son. That kind of premise never ends well, so it should come as no surprise that terrible things start to unfold after this plant enters their house.
Our review of the film from Marshall Shaffer praises Hausner's precise filmmaking style in creating this little terror:
Though Alice might lose her grip on the world around her, Hausner remains steady in her guidance of the film. It's clear from the opening moments of Little Joe that we're in the hands of a master craftswoman, an aesthetic practitioner of exceptional rigor. Her house style featuring austere performance work and meticulous composition lends an unsettling aura to a story that so easily could play in an apocalyptic register. She threads the needle delicately between making her actors appear choreographed and not robotic, just as she builds a world that feels artificial without ever giving off a whiff of sterility.
In order to let the viewer experience the horror for themselves, our review shies away from detailing exactly what goes wrong after Little Joe has an effect on Alice's son. But as the trailer for Little Joe has shown us, he's not the only one who will be changed by this seemingly innocuous plant. Ben Whishaw plays a fellow scientist who comes into contact with the flower's pollen too. Clearly this plant is doing something to the people surrounding Alice, but to what end?
Here's the official synopsis for Little Joe:
LITTLE JOE follows Alice (Emily Beecham), a single mother and dedicated senior plant breeder at a corporation engaged in developing new species. She has engineered a special crimson flower, remarkable not only for its beauty but also for its therapeutic value: if kept at the ideal temperature, fed properly and spoken to regularly, this plant makes its owner happy. Against company policy, Alice takes one home as a gift for her teenage son, Joe. They christen it 'Little Joe.' But as their plant grows, so too does Alice's suspicion that her new creation may not be as harmless as its nickname suggests.
Little Joe arrives in theaters starting today.