In the Earth

Hollywood has produced a plethora of horror/suspense films that could fill a lifetime. It's not actually one of my favorite genres, but when reading about the premise of the story, I felt that it has potentiality. Wow, was I way off! It was extremely difficult to focus heavily on the writing, directing or acting considering the abject bizarre way "In the Earth" unfolded.

As the world searches for a cure to a disastrous virus, a scientist Martin Lowery (Joel Fry) and a park scout Alma (Ellora Torchia) venture deep in the forest for a routine equipment run. Through the night, their journey becomes a terrifying voyage through the heart of darkness as the forest comes to life around them. The more they attempted to leave the forest, the more the forest will not let them go. 

Others to round out the cast are Reece Shearsmith as Zach, Hayley Squires as Dr. Olivia Wendle, John Hollingworth as James and Mark Montero as Frank. 

This was deftly directed by Ben Wheatly ("Down Terrace" '09, "Steve Coogan: The Inside Story" (TV movie) '09, "Kill List" '11, "Inside Burge & Way" (TV movie) '11, "Burge & Way" (TV movie) '11, "The ABCs of Death" (segment "U is for Unearthed") '12, "A Field in England" '13, "High-Rise" '15, "Free Fire" '16, "Happy New Year, Colin Burstead" '18, "Rebecca" '20) plus TV and video shorts. The way this filmmaker was able to extract effective emotions from his actors was amazing. The characters, at several points, knew what was going on, and then didn't and became very perplexed by their predicament--the audience wasn't sure what was going to happen next, but this was obviously purposed. I can see why he has the varied resume that he has. It was also written by Wheatly ("Down Terrace" '09, "Kill List" '11, "A Field in England" '13, "Free Fire" '16, "Happy New Year, Colin Burstead" '18) plus TV. Unfortunately, this is where the film falls apart. Even though the directing was effective and even though this writer has a fair amount of experience, I'm not sure what was going on in this writer's head. What started as an interesting premise, simply fell apart about 30 minutes into the running time, and really never survived. It was a disjointed, incongruent screenplay that definitely puts the 'B' in bizarre. Other than an abundance of psychosis going on the the story, I'm not really sure how that worked into the story. Not sure what happened with writer, bad day at the laptop? Who knows, but suffice it to say, this was a maniacal story which lead to more questions than it could ever answer. 

Other than effective directing, the one positive aspect about the story is its originality. It was that, because the audience had no clue what was going to happen next--I'm not sure if that's a positive or a negative. You be the judge if you dare. If you decide to see this, there is a disclaimer at the beginning of the film which indicates that because of the extreme light flashes during parts of the story, it could lead one to experience light sensitive seizures. Forewarned is for-armed.

Out of 4 Stars: 1.5                                        Rated: R                                              107mins.