In the Earth

If you enjoy reading my Spoiler-Free reviews, please follow my blog @ https://www.msbreviews.com A festival with so much content must have ambiguous, dark, disturbing films. In The Earth is one of these movies, and it will surely be incredibly divisive. Unfortunately, I don't believe it worked for me. It goes from having a lunatic overly obsessed with some sort of spiritual entity to mixing up actual science using creepy, confusing imagery throughout the runtime. Ben Wheatley is not exactly a stranger when it comes to creating a film with an ominous atmosphere (Rebecca), but in all honesty,…

“In the Earth” is a psychedelic mash-up of M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Happening” and “The Blair Witch Project,” and it is unpleasant to suffer through. This disorienting, bloody story about killer plants and a psycho in the woods is more like an experimental film than an enjoyable horror / sci-fi flick. A deadly virus has shut down the world, and Dr. Martin Lowery (Joel Fry) volunteers to work at a research facility deep in the forest. He’s partnered with Alma (Ellora Torchia), and the pair soon venture out into the woods to collect samples. During the night, they are brutally attacked and…

In the Earth is the type of horror film that could be totally spoiled for you from the get-go on paper and it still wouldn’t prepare you for what actually takes place when you finally experience it for yourself. Ben Wheatley channels the psychotropic elements of A Field in England here than any other of his previous films. While the lack of a proper explanation of what is occurring can be considered frustrating or even if the events of In the Earth are actually coherent to the audience, the film capitalizes on the uncertainty of COVID combined with the dangers that may be lurking out in the…

*In the Earth* is essentially a film about human beings discovering something vast, ancient and apparently communicative beneath their feet, then immediately assuming what it needs is better equipment. Martin and ranger Alma enter the woods looking for scientist Olivia Wendle, but Ben Wheatley steadily shifts the problem away from whatever pandemic has emptied the surrounding world. The real isolation is stranger. Everyone here seems cut off from everyone else while the forest itself may be connected through an enormous underground fungal network. Humanity has become the peripheral species,…