In The Earth

My first Ben Wheatley movie... no, really.

Of course I've known of Wheatley for years now yet haven't checked out anything from him until last night at an AMC in Orlando. To be honest, there was some question concerning if I would find his typical movie to be “pretentious claptrap” or something else that wouldn't appeal to me even if it would be favorable to the average Letterboxd user. When I saw Godzilla vs. Kong theatrically, the trailer for this played beforehand and it looked interesting as something which looked like folk horror set in the woods.

This was shot quickly last year during the pandemic, so it is set in a more severe pandemic as a researcher is led into a forest by a lady. There aren't too many other characters and I'll leave it at that; it's not a spoiler to say that things go wrong as the duo experience bizarre elements out in an isolated location. Now, it has some unforgettable scenes that feature very trippy imagery, an electronic score (how that factors into the story made me guffaw when it probably wasn't supposed to) and a small cast full of unfamiliar faces which all were at least fine. What a doggone shame then that this wasn't too enjoyable to me overall, with some stretches that just felt L-O-N-G and that did sour my opinion.

This does fit into the “heightened horror” category; the term itself I don't fully understand its name but to be frank, most of the ones I've seen I thought were overrated. That does include Hereditary, It Follows and The Babadook. This is not as highly rated as those-unfortunately it's one of those films which has a few gruesome over the top gory moments... that has been tiresome to me for years now. I do get why some would love this, while others would hate the movie to death. Myself, I am more ambivalent about the end product. This being made during the pandemic where (presumably) it was made safe & various people got work... that is nice and all; if only I would have liked it better, and there wouldn't have been a few minutes of strobing light-which was noted in a warning at the beginning-I don't have epilepsy so my complaint about that is that it hurts my eyes; for some reason it seems like a bad idea to create an effect that causes many people to not look at your movie...

This hasn't made me swear off Ben Wheatley for good; one day I hope to see something from him that is more up my alley-and I am not referring to the upcoming sequel to The Meg.