Direction: Ben Wheatley
Country: UK
Ben Wheatley’s In the Earth uses cheap tricks for mood, never achieving acceptable levels of satisfaction. The narrative develops with chunky episodes and mechanical dialogues, following a cooked-to-formula script that tries to play edgy with contemporary anxieties and an impure-nature setting.
The story pairs up Martin Lowery (Joel Fry), a scientist impassionately committed to making crops more efficient, and Alma (Ellora Torchia), an affable park ranger, as they venture into the woods when a deadly virus keeps ravaging the world. In the course of this journey they bump into a deceiving stranger, Zack (Reece Shearsmith), as well as Martin’s fellow colleague, Olivia Wendle (Hayley Squires).
There’s not enough skill in the plotting and execution of a criminally boring fiction that comes packed with hallucinogenic pretentiousness. While exposing glaring plot holes, the film drowns in waves of imbecility, rendering everything frigid with a tacky approach.
The only thing this murky film can do is to trigger an epileptic attack via the unpleasant images that try to bring it to a climax. The woods can actually be scary, but not here. Wheatley’s new trance is not recommended, confirming the bad shape of the British director after the unsuccessful remake of Hitchcock’s Rebecca in 2020.
