In the Earth (2021)
Directed by Ben Wheatley
As a deadly virus ravages the world, Dr. Martin Lowery embarks on a mission to reach test site ATU327A, a research hub deep in the Arboreal Forest. The arduous journey, guided by park scout Alma, is set back by a nighttime attack that leaves the two bruised and shoeless. When they run into Zach, a man living off the grid, they gratefully accept his help. Zach’s intentions aren’t exactly what they seem, however, and a path out of the forest and into safety quickly fades as the line between myth and science blurs.
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11 films that influenced In the Earth
What critics say influenced In the Earth
It’s easy to see how “In the Earth” might be compared to the 1999 horror film “The Blair Witch Project,” because both movies are mainly about people possibly being trapped in the woods while an evil spirit might be on the loose.
You’ll be reminded of previous genre entries like The Blair Witch Project and Wolf Creek during the first half, and probably flabbergasted during the increasingly opaque second half—a strobing montage of menacing imagery and ideas about nature’s dominion over our lives.
But after its evocative introduction, In the Earth ends up in comfortable, disappointingly underdeveloped territory for the director, incorporating some of Kill List ’s folk-horror undercurrents and A Field in England ’s psychedelia while borrowing freely from The Blair Witch Project .
Digital camera technology has improved exponentially since "The Blair Witch Project," so Wheatley and cinematographer Nick Gillespie are able to create images that are both eerie and strangely beautiful.
In fits, that identity is compelling, hypnotic, and terrifying, The Blair Witch Project by way of Annihilation .
This is where writer-director Ben Wheatley injects “The Silence of the Lambs” and “The Blair Witch Project” into his existing “Annihilation” narrative, though his being extra here reads more like a desperate attempt to distract from the movie’s low budget than a stroke of genius.
But even beyond that, Wheatley is delving into themes found in Tarkovsky’s Stalker and Bergman’s Hour of the Wolf .
In the Earth sees Wheatley aping Andrei Tarkovsky by taking liberally from Stalker , but it also sees him aping himself by rehashing A Field in England much more predictably.
The threats of violence that emerge on this pair’s damp adventure, coupled with a general lo-fi and deadpan vibe, hark back to Wheatley’s earlier Kill List and A Field in England .
Filmmaker Ben Wheatley ( Free Fire , Kill List ) combines these anxieties in his latest horror movie, In the Earth .
A part of me believes that Ben Wheatley saw Midsommar , which reminded him of the success he had with Kill List , and wanted to take his thoughts back into folklore horror.
Nick Gillespie’s raw cinematography and Wheatley’s choppy editing complement Clint Mansell’s droning, harsh score to create an anxious edginess that recalls Kill List .
To put it simply, the director borrows visual and thematical elements from his own films sans “Kill List” and “A Field in England.”
It’s not a stretch to imagine that he’s at least familiar with the magazine: his best known films, the modern folk horror classics A Field in England and Kill List, are steeped in the same sort of veddy British spookery that fills its pages month after month.
"In the Earth" reminds me of old 1970s-era horror films like "The Wicker Man" or "Soylent Green" -- loopy, sensuous, a bit satirical, a tad psychedelic, more unnerving than blood-soaked gorefest.
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It mixes science, religion, and the supernatural into a nightmare vision that recalls everything from “Annihilation” to “Event Horizon.”
This almost seems like the director’s own art rage experiment akin to Darren Aronofsky’s Mother! .
Nature becoming a living and malevolent presence is something we’ve seen recently in Alex Garland’s Annihilation and the little-seen Greek myth film Entwined.
Not dissimilar to Alex Garland’s Annihilation or Color Out of Space, In the Earth explores humanity’s symbiotic relationship to the environment and does it with just as much unbridled trippy effects.
There’s a bit of a mixture between Ari Aster’s films, studying pagan rituals and groupthink that turns bloody and Alex Garland’s Annihilation , which looks at how nature can control the way a human acts or becomes.
Produced in 15 days in August 2020, In the Earth (now playing) is not only a companion piece to Wheatley’s A Field in England—a mushroom-fueled psychotronic nightmare par excellence—but also to Alex Garland’s Annihilation, sharing a narrative focus on scientists venturing into a toxic heart of darkness, where they find brutal violence and trippy 2001-style lunacy.
His next film, supposedly and surprisingly, is a sequel to the dopey Jason Statham giant-shark potboiler The Meg .
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After veering wildly from his usual fare with a remake of “Rebecca,” writer/editor/director Ben Wheatley gets back to his literal roots with a trippy horror outing that suggests the psychedelia of of both “Mandy” and his own “A Field in England” with the urban legend of the Blair Witch and the folkloric horrors of “Midsommer.”
For example, he builds a terrific suspense sequence out of an escape attempt, with flying arrows and swinging axes, cut and scored within an inch of its life – but then it collapses into overwrought stylistic pyrotechnics, indicative less of a bold storytelling strategy than that the director apparently got ahold of a “Mandy” Blu-ray.
Playing on these characters’ mental state, the way they are absorbed into this forest calls to mind films such as Mandy and Annihilation, let alone The Blair Witch Project .
His inventive conceptual designs ( Free Fire and High Rise ) often tantalize with untapped potential.
A mere 15 days later, he emerged with a dirty little film aimed at reminding admirers that he is still the same madman who made such easy-bake cult-nip as Kill List, A Field in England, High-Rise and Sightseers.
The latest from unpredictable — to an extent — writer/director Ben Wheatley ( High-Rise ; Rebecca ), the pandemic-shot and -set thriller dabbles in folklore terror to varying degrees of success, yet feels hemmed in by the limitations of a COVID production.
Whatever Wheatley’s shortcomings—and, given the flat beer of High-Rise and Free Fire, he has a few—this director has abilities.
What follows is a fog-shrouded descent into madness that feels much more like Wheatley’s wheelhouse than his slicker genre thrillers like Free Fire and High Rise .