Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Good movie but grossly overrated

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

The title of this seventies oddity refers to Kirlian photography, which is the process of photographing living objects in an electromagnetic field which makes it look as if the objects have an aura. (According to skeptics the kirlian effect is nothing more than the object conducting an electric current). The film is not about Kirlian photography, however, it's about the implications of it: the fact that plants have an aura which reflects their mood.Lauri (Nancy Boykin) owns a flower shop in the New York neighborhood of Soho. In her spare time she does research on telepathic contact with plants. When her sister Rilla (Nancy Snyder) introduces her new boyfriend Robert (Joel Colodner) she warns her sister: 'I sense… my plants sense he's a bad person.' When Lauri is found dead a little later, Rilla starts believing one of the plants must have witnessed the murder. With help from her dead sister's research Rilla learns how to establish telepathic contact with the plants and thus discover the identity of the killer.The Kirlian Witness almost completely takes place in and around one apartment building in New York, and it has no more than a handful of characters. It makes for a claustrophobic viewing experience, full of quiet tension.What makes The Kirlian Witness not only interesting, but also stand out within the sub genre of seventies paranormal thrillers, is its complete lack of sensationalism. It isn't comparable to say, The Fury (1978), The Amityville Horror (1979), The Medusa Touch (1978) or The Manitou (1978), to name a few of those movies, released around the same time.If anything The Kirlian Witness is comparable to early Cronenberg movies because of its prosaic approach to the bizarre subject matter, its cold and bleak atmosphere and its detached stance towards its characters. Much like Cronenberg did with Scanners and The Brood writer-director Jonathan Sarno doesn't even try to convince the audience of the reality of his supernatural premise. Paradoxically enough, the viewer accepts it immediately as a given within the world of the film and is not distracted by any clumsily developed claims to authenticity which plagued most of the aforementioned films.This was released on VHS in The Netherlands in the early eighties. I haven't seen it since anywhere.

The movie revolves around two sisters: One is a photographer who is married to an architect and lives a relatively normal life, and the other is a houseplant-obsessed, socially awkward isolationist who lives below her sister in a Soho loft and runs a slipshod plant shop. The weird one (well acted, by the way, as are all the parts) dies within the first 20 minutes of the film, and the rest of the movie revolves around her grieving sister trying to figure out how she died--accidentally or not? And if not, who did it? Although the production year on this flick is 1979, the film feels as though it was made 10 years earlier and is a quintessential product of that occult-obsessed era. As such, the alternative sleuthing tactics used by the sister-cum-detective involves colorful Kirlian photography of auras (the auras of both plants and people) to determine who has ill intent and who knows what. The twist? Her architect-husband might be the murderer (or not) AND one special plant may have seen everything happen! What is that plant trying to say?!! The feel of the film is serious and decidedly (and purposefully) muted -- the tone, the acting, the music, the photography. You might call it slow, but someone with the right sensibilities might instead call it "creepy." Indeed, the film strikes many of the same chords as horror films of the time period--we're talking about that atmosphere of hopeless Gothic dread and awful, depressing inevitability that drenches cult horror flicks like "Let's Scare Jessica to Death," "The Pyx," or "The Haunting of Julia" (largely created by the music and sometimes-abstract camera angles here in this film). But unfortunately these emotive moments are far and few between. Most importantly, it should be noted that this really is NOT a horror film at all. Although it has some occult overtones and that atmospheric feeling of dread, the story is a who-done-it mystery.For someone who can plug into the film from this "atmospheric 1970s horror movie" angle (even though, as mentioned, you'd be hard pressed to call this a horror yarn!), "The Kirlian Witness" might be considered a rare gem--not a stellar flick, but a minor gem nonetheless. I got my copy on Amazon (in 2012), where it is currently available as an "on-demand" DVD-R with full color artwork in the DVD case and also on the disc itself. (For some reason, I half-think it is actually the director who is selling them himself, but this is pure speculation.) The transfer is workable, but as the fuzzy print testifies, this has in no way been remastered. In fact, I'd actually love to see a very clean copy of the film, but considering its relative obscurity, I seriously doubt that will ever happen.

Entirely original thriller is hampered a bit by sluggish lulls, yet is conceptually revolutionary and comes off more credible than its premise might suggest. When a woman claiming to possess an unearthly connection to plant-life dies mysteriously, her sister, compelled to put to rest unanswered questions in the matter, begins an investigation of plant/human communication phenomena. Her shocking conclusion is that her sister's houseplants are not only cogent key-witnesses to the murder, but they may also be attempting to warn her that she is in similar danger.Honorable performances and a wonderfully offbeat story make this low-budget effort a most enjoyable surprise...possibly not so easy to attain, but worth tracking down.6/10

The deadeningly slow pace is what ruins this picture. A woman whose sister was murdered uses kirlian photography to try and solve the crime. An interesting idea but a livelier script was needed. Lawrence Tierney has a brief cameo.