Directed by René Daalder
In order to combat the damage caused by the depletion of the ozone layer, maverick biologist Hank Symes unleashes his most ambitious experiment to date: accelerated evolution. Unfortunately, this not only causes the authorities to take notice, but also creates a backlash from his new neighbors--leaving his son caught in the middle.
Habitat - Es lebt!, Es lebt!, Élőhely, Среда обитания, ハビタ/新種生命体
Germany16 Germany 
Plants and horror, my favourite things. Please make more plant bodyodyody horror.
Accidents in the experimental fungi lab. Spores, spores everywhere.
The whole have a plant for every electronic device in your house advice went too far in this house.
A direct-to-video, post-ozone, sci-fi environmentalist thriller/teen angst melodrama starring Balthazar Getty? I do believe I've found the most 1997 movie of 1997.
Written and directed by the weirdo behind Massacre at Central High and Population One, this one peeks into a day in the life of hipster teen Getty as he struggles to adjust to a new high school where he's tormented by a couple of floppy-haired jocks and hypermasculine gym teacher Kenneth Welsh (somehow playing it considerably less subtly than he did as Windom Earle!). Meanwhile, his hippie/scientist/eco-activist parents have transformed their house into a sentient biosphere that doesn't hesitate to defend itself against unfriendly intruders. Oh, and also, nobody can be outside in the daylight for more than…
A memorable entry in niche high school post apocalyptic flicks, like Class of 1991, Class of Nuke ‘Em High and Demolition High…but feels infinitely more Canadian. Degrassi: Beyond Thunderdome, but Thunderdome is a destroyed ozone layer. It’s kinda Climate Change meets body horror with an intense early CG chaser.
Balthazar Getty is on the run with his mad botany science parents again. It’s a new town, fresh start, and jungle-free house (for now) but parents have messed with plant genes enough to where dad has literally disintegrated into a pixelated green fart cloud that occasionally organizes into his face and mom has gone full chlorophyll-blooded Gatekeeper Sigourney. They have somehow figured out how to survive the death rays of the sun,…
Balthazar Getty plays an angsty teenage boy who is moving to a new town. He resents his parents. He clashes with his new classmates. He falls for an unattainable girl. Oh, and it's some kind of apocalypse.
To the best of my understanding, the ozone layer has been completely destroyed, so you can't be out in the sun for more than a couple minutes without cooking. People have evolved to life indoors and underground. Getty's parents are weird science hippies. His dad is working on some kind of plant research when -- suddenly -- oops! He's now an ethereal plant being in their house, which has been transformed into a jungle.
What?
The movie is marketed as a horror film,…
Unbelievably 90's plant based body horror set in a world where the Ozone Layer is gone and people hide in protected towns. Lots of womb/body style sets with moisture everywhere. Some gratuitous nudity. Balthazar Getty doing a mix of Charlie Sheen and French Stewart.
Silly, but fun.
Вскоре после переезда на новое место отец-ученый (Чеки Карио) школьника (Бальтазар Гетти) превращается в лесной дух дома, стремительно обрастающего лианами и мхом. А вскоре к нему присоединяется и мама (Элис Криге).
Крайне дёшево выглядящий и дикий, но изобретательный постапокалиптический эко-сайфай напополам со школьной мелодрамой, где Гетти влюбляется в дочку физрука (девушку мы помним по "Факультету", а Кеннет Уэлш тут ещё более безумный, чем в роли врага Дэйла Купера), а его кошмарят однокашники в сценах с гомосекс-вайбом. Ко второму часу начинается борьба учёных в защитных костюмах с домом-оранжереей и его обитателями, причем с кучей рукотворных спецэффектов. И всё это снято в Канаде голландцем.
Что называется, не проходите мимо.
Even having watched this just a few days ago it, running it back through my head feels like I'm misremembering something I watched on cable as a kid while sweating through the flu. I don't think I've triggered some lost memory even if the SciFi Channel was something I'd tune into anytime I could get access to cable back in the day, but it's such a bizarre string of scenes and ideas that it surely couldn't have played out like I'm thinking I did.
Something about Balthazer Getty being a far too old high school student in an eco-apocalyptic Southwestern US adjusting to a new town while romancing the sadistic PE coach's daughter (the coach for some reason just makes…
LOVED
It really has it all: silly high concept premise, gloriously 90s made for TV low budget aesthetics, hammy acting, primitive cgi, homoerotic bullying, slime, gore, practical effects galore, and Alice Krige!!!
This desperately deserves a restoration and a good bluray release!
okay the set design in this fucking rules. the titular Habitat, both in its biopunk terrarium stage and its goopy maggots & mushrooms horror evolution were insanely fun to look at and really made me wish this had a nice HD transfer of this to watch instead of the ancient fuzzy DVD rip i had, and the waterfall scene looked like some shit right out of a latter era shaw bros fantasy production, very, dare i say, Chor-Yuenian. another thing i appreciate about this is how unapologetically gross and horny it is; we've all read the Everyone Is Beautiful and No One Is Horny essay on bloodknife.com so there's no reason to recapitulate its thesis but i mean its fucking true…
I wish I was normal, I DON'T WANT A DAD WHO IS MADE OF GNATS
Do you ever watch a movie as a little kid, and remember it being really weird. You remember scenes but you can't remember the title though, and so you are confused about wheatear the movie is real or not. Well that was this movie for me. I watched it after 20 years or what ever, and it sucks ass. You would think a movie about a Gnat dad which is a blatant rip off of the Goosebumps book Stay Out of the Basement and set in a post apocalyptic future would be good right? Nah cause 90% of it is just a boring teen romance.
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
I was expecting a trashy film with slimy effects. What I got was more of a teen film with elements of eco and body horror.
But the story behind it is not uninteresting. The ozone layer has been destroyed and staying too long in the sun is deadly!
There is a lot to see in terms of animation, even though it is never bloody. The house is transformed into a veritable greenhouse by the experiments. CGI was also used. But it didn't strike me as negative. I would have liked the plants to be a bit more aggressive.
The English title also fits much better than the German one, "ES LEBT !".
If you fancy an atypical "new kid at school" flick and can also do something with body horror, you can risk a look!
The Important Cinema Club Super Scary Movie Challenge for 2023: Entry #1
Category: A French-Canadian horror film
Genre weirdo Rene Daalder does direct-to-SciFi-Channel nonsense and comes out the other end with... I'm not quite sure, actually, but it comes together pretty well in the end. The middle is real saggy, owing to an overindulge of Balthazar Getty and his squint, mumbly conflicts at Future School with Generic Jock #17. Every time Daalder half-heartedly jumped into this material, I kept thinking how I could be watching a whole movie of Tcheky Karyo turning into mold and Alice Krige floating around a terrarium wearing curtains. But there's enough eventual weirdness (and people being forcibly turned into plants) in the back half to make the trudge worth it.
It really did need a more dynamic performer than Getty in the lead, especially since he's paired off with firecracker Laura Harris.
