In The Earth (2021)
Directed by Ben Wheatley; screenplay by Ben Wheatley; starring Joel Fry, Ellora Torchia, Reece Shearsmith and Hayley Squires.
4.5/5
Sometimes, when you go to the cinema, it can be really hard to describe what you just saw – not because it’s overwhelmingly good or bad, but because it’s actually just hard to evoke with words. In The Earth is one of those films. You’ll likely hear descriptions of the film that use colourful words like hallucinogenic, mind-bending or even grisly – I’ll probably use a lot like them here myself – but really these aren’t enough to fully grasp the full force of the thrill ride Ben Wheatley’s managed to conjure up in this latest outing.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. I should probably give you at least a cursory glance at what’s going on before I tell you why this is absolutely worth your time and money if you’re a horror fan.
The film is rather simple on the face of things, after the flop that was last year’s Rebecca, it’s a triumphant return to the tiny scale of much of Wheatley’s prior work – the obviously comparable A Field in England springs to mind, but so too do Free Fire, High-Rise, and Sightseers.
Research scientist Martin Lowery (Joel Fry) has been sent to a particularly botanically bountiful patch of woodland (pangs of Annihilation) in an attempt to uncover information that might aid agricultural efforts. His first destination is a small lodge, requisitioned by the government and set up as an outpost from which to stage expeditions into the woods. It’s here that it becomes apparent that the world has been hit by something not dissimilar from COVID-19: Martin submits himself willingly to rigorous testing, lathers his hands in sanitiser, describes his excitement at seeing fresh faces after months of quarantine and isolation.
Soon, though, he’s off again. It’s a two-day hike from the lodge to his final destination – the research camp of one Doctor Olivia Wendle (Hayley Squires), which itself has recently ceased its periodic communications via letter – so there’s plenty of time for awkward small-talk with his capable guide, Alma (Ellora Torchia) as well as time enough for him to tell her just what’s so special about these woods.
It’s his understanding, along with that of his old colleague, that underneath a large section of the woods sits a “mycorrhizal mat,” a symbiotic network of fungus and plant life that allows the living matter of the woods to communicate needs and transmit nutrients and resources where they’re needed. As it has been described by Martin’s elusive colleague: it’s a kind of brain.
But disaster strikes all too suddenly – and when I say suddenly, I mean it – when, during their second night in the woods, Alma and Martin are set upon by some unseen assailant, discovering only once they’ve regained consciousness that their equipment and boots have been stolen. Leaving them barefoot and entirely cut off from the outside world.
With nowhere left to turn, it’s no surprise that they’re a little hasty to accept the help of the far too kind Samaritan, Zach (Reece Shearsmith.) Almost right away it’s apparent that the eccentric man-of-the-woods might not be exactly who he says he is, but slowly it also starts to dawn that the sprawling, eldritch network present beneath the woodland floor might be a bit farther reaching, both physically and psychically, than first thought.
Beneath the epidermis of that knowing, amused glint his horror always seems to have in its eye, there’s something extra to Wheatley’s efforts this time around. At the heart of In The Earth is a tale of suffocating, inhuman isolation rubbing up against ultimate, self-negating connection. From what we’ve been isolated and deprived of and to what we’re connecting is up for debate but given the past year, watching this film felt like I’d come up for air.
After the film finished, I sat down to have a meal with my buddy, Justin, who’d come with me that night to see it and we got to talking. Having written about the concept for a class last year, he pointed out the way the film uses its gorier moments – the kind involving the mutilation of various bodily appendages – to bring the horror and the tension to a more physical level; to ground it in an utterly visceral awareness of our own bodies.
As ever, he was absolutely spot on, but I think the entire film strives for this, not just those particularly gruesome moments. The whole thing attacks the senses with its dizzying, hallucinogenic (there it is) stylism; attacks the very distinction between the fictional and real worlds, such that it’s hard not to fall under the film’s thrall, in much the same way the characters are falling under that of the woods.
You can expect strobing lights, as well as strobing edits and images superimposed that look like they could be the afterimages of things seen before that’ve been burnt right onto the cornea. Also present is an odd experimentation with different cameras and resolutions that at times gives things the texture of an old DVD, which is maybe in itself another nod to The Blair Witch Project from which the film is so clearly taking its notes.
The effect of all this is that the various suspense sequences involving the more tangible threat of Zach – all pretty much structured in the standard “good guy hides from bad guy” mode – are given this horrible intangible dread, and that headier, far more abstract horror is lent bit more of a physical heft than otherwise it might’ve had. It really is a masterful piece of horror filmmaking. I can’t think of another recent example that manages to fuse these two elements as adeptly.
For some it’s also going to be a potentially fairly frustrating film. There’s no two ways about it. It’s not going to give its secrets up easily, and that’s going to put some off, but its immediate impenetrability is only a boon to my mind. It’s going to stick with you and it’s going to draw you in for repeat viewings, and I think it’ll be worth it. I already want to go back and see it again, myself.
Wheatley’s idiosyncrasies are hypnotic and entirely unpretentious and everything he has creative control over excites me. I just hope he stays away from the temptations of the bigger productions he’s started to stray towards. Why on Earth he’s been tapped for the Meg 2: The Trench is beyond me, but if it’s going to be another example of a studio dampening the ambitions of a singular creative vision, it needs to stop.
This all being said, a wild underwater Wheatley ride with a massive budget does sound pretty fun, so there’s that.
Watched on 21st June 2021