phancy.com - horror reviews - MOH 2021

In The Earth



IMDb Info

Release Year: 2021
Runtime: 1h 47min
Country: UK
Language: English
Genre Tags: Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller
Plot Summary: As the world searches for a cure to a disastrous virus, a scientist and park scout venture deep in the forest for a routine equipment run.

Poster - Title Card


phancy.com rating:

phancy.com notes: Bonkers mashup of eco, pagan and slasher horror, all wrapped up in a sci-fi head trip. The various story elements never really amount to much, but the ride is fun and darkly humorous. (The movie really hates this guy's foot!) Bonus star for the cinematography and score.


Outside Reviews:

Matt Zoller Seitz
3 out of 4 stars - rogerebert.com

All of this stuff connects rather glancingly, or vaguely. For the most part, that's good cinema praxis (better to leave the audience guessing or a bit confused than explain every little thing to death), but still there are times when it seems as if Wheatley is fudging things, like a magician who asks "Is this your card?" and then takes it away just fast enough that you can't be sure. Razzle-dazzle flash-cuts, disorienting jump cuts, and incessant strobe effects amplify dread and confusion in the film's most intense scenes. There's a lot of screaming and crying and lot of pain, and it would all be unbearable if Wheatley didn't exhibit such mordant wit. He's constantly setting up scenes where you know exactly which horrible thing might happen to one of the characters, then making you wait for it, and wait for it, through false starts, digressions, and clumsy mistakes that require a do-over. And when it finally does happen: wow.


A.A. Dowd
Grade: C - Ben Wheatley's eco-thriller In The Earth has one terrific scene and a lot of boring hooey

There's one great scene lurking around the midway mark of In The Earth, the new movie from British cult filmmaker Ben Wheatley. A deceptively polite eccentric, Zack (Reece Shearsmith), has drugged and held captive a pair of strangers he's stumbled upon in the woods. One of them has an infected wound on his foot. Should he take the poor bloke to the hospital? Nah, they'd never make it in time, Zack rationalizes. Better to solve the problem himself with his trusty, conveniently sharpened ax. Audiences may think, in this moment, of the big scene in Misery - there's a comparable dread in the futile attempts to reason with a psychopath whose mind is made up. But Wheatley compounds the, well, misery with false starts and close calls, each precarious fall of the ax ratcheting up the delirious tension, until the moment reaches a fever pitch of peer-through-the-fingers anxiety. It's a miniature master class of prolonged unease that gets you laughing at your own squeamish anticipation.