The Fertilizer Home

Indie horror for the past quarter century has been inundated with grief, depression, and to a lesser extent, obsession. Every new horror film seems to be about one of these three themes, turning the horror into metaphors. The Fertilizer Home, a new indie South Korean social-slasher, inserts an entirely original new theme: being someone’s preferred object of love.

Somewhere in rural Korea, Mi-jo (Kim Seung-hwa) runs a family factory recycling dried tobacco leaves into fertilizer. When otherwise lovely townspeople start murdering the people they love most in the world, heads turn to the factory and the chemicals it releases onto the people. The aggressors become convinced the single person they love most is not actually themselves—and they respond to their loved ones being mysteriously taken with murderous intent. The film opens bleakly as a grandmother stabs an infant. Mi-jo denies a connection between her factory and the violence externally, though she knows damn well that the chemicals really do have disastrous health consequences. A curse is the other possible explanation for the string of murderers, and Eun-jo (Park Ah-in), Mi-jo’s twin shaman sister, is the main figurehead behind this idea.

Mi-jo is like a cantaloupe. Many people like her or respect her, even love her, but she is nobody’s first choice. Her wheelchair-ridden father (Jeong Dong-hwan) clearly has a favorite daughter, and it isn’t Mi-jo. Despite being the primary caretaker for Eun-jo’s daughter (Gi So-you), the little girl is bothered by not knowing who she would kill if she gets the disease. I’m no parent, but I imagine an unreciprocated love from your little one could be one of the most devastating of all realities. Would-be killers become possible lovers (in the most platonic sense of the word) to Mi-jo. She longs to be loved like she is the most important person in the world to someone.