In writer/director Matthew Leutwyler’s newborn horror flick “Unearthed” the artifact dig and spiritual violation plots are combined with nuclear mutation to provide a fair rendition of the modern B horror film.
The screenplay is bad, but not bad enough to be very good. It is bad in the sense of being rushed, mundane and ill-ordered. The vocabulary is correct, being about that of the average newspaper and thus allowing universal access to the vital youth market.
But the routine plot is rushed, which is bad enough even without the lack of coordination that needlessly cuts the legs out from under the tension with malfunctioning sequences and poor character development.
The problem with the order of the events is that the monster (Yes, there is a monster; that can’t be a spoiler...) is divulged before the characters have enough time to feel guilty about their role in creating it.
In the case of the “Mummy” and “Frankenstein” horror classics (more recently, the “Indiana Jones” movies), man makes a serious mistake by messing with the spiritual. The audience is told the transgressors will pay, and the tension builds as the story shows how they will pay.
A flaw in “Unearthed” is that although the first victim, a seedy truck driver, dies on a suitable seedy deserted highway a few miles outside of Hickville, he is just a normal shmoe with no bad baggage, hence no guilt potential. He dies. Big deal.
After he dies, nothing is left behind but a slimy monster pinky that drunken sheriff Annie fondles like there is no tomorrow. Would you fondle a slimy monster pinky you found lodged in the grill of a wrecked truck? Would you?
In terms of guilt, Annie is an improvement over the truck driver in that she drinks like a fish and messed up a little girl who met a very nasty end because of Annie’s mistake. The problem is that her mistake is not clear and therefore her guilt is not powerful. She pounds down screwdrivers for breakfast, but who wouldn’t like to do that now and then? It’s not something you automatically go to hell for, like the guy who shot the bum in “Cabin Fever” and tried to cover it up. We knew he was going to get in deep shit for that and so we were ready when his skin fell off. See?
The photography is definitely on the high side, for a low side budget, getting the message across with almost a complete absence of expensive special effects. But there is a problem with the lack of graphic mutilation. Although this is understandable given low budget props, the director inexplicably passes up numerous opportunities to show noses hanging off of broken skulls and guts falling out of opened corpses.
How expensive could that be?
Instead the cameraman does a shaky hand-held thing that looks like footage from a digicam tied to a cat’s tail. The monster itself is a seldom-seen animated thing. Great when we see it, but we don’t see it enough.
Good supporting work from mediocre character actors playing ignorant stereotypical mopes who richly deserve to be dragged off and have their innards probed. And good casting in providing enough of them to be able to mutilate one every 15 minutes or so for the last three quarters of the film.
Last, but definitely not least, an excellent performance by Oglala/Lakota Sioux Russell Means (AIM honcho against the Feds at Wounded Knee in ’72). He gets a few choice lines of some of the best new-age faux-Indian rubbish psycho-babble in recent history. It’s about stuff coming out of the ground and fits perfectly with both the plot and the title.
All in all, good for that rainy Saturday afternoon at the mall with few ill-effects for the little ones, and good Friday night DVD food-fight entertainment when the cats are away. After that, this one will go back beneath the earth from whence it came.
Unearthed
Reviewed at Tribeca Film Festival 2007. MPAA: Not Rated
USA
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