‘In the Earth': Ben Wheatley's Lockdown-Made Horror Movie Gets Lost in Witchcraft Gibberish [Review]

Review originally posted on 01.30.21 as part of the Sundance Film Festival

Ben Wheatley returns to genre cinema, after his questionable “Rebecca” remake, with “In the Earth.” What this latest film actually constitutes is the writer-director’s attempt to go back to his cinematic roots (“KIll List” and “A Field in England”), a time when he was a younger filmmaker, excited by the notion of creating art and enamored by his power to cast a horrific and unpredictable spell on audience. Sadly, it feels like the spark is missing here.

This latest spooker is a hybrid of science-fiction and horror shot during the UK’s 2020 lockdown. The parallels are inevitable, the story is set in a world where masks are worn and quarantine is mandatory: a deadly virus has reshaped the world. Dr Martin Lowery (Joel Fry) is a researcher specializing in crop efficiency, he’s desperate to find Dr Olivia Wendle (Hayley Squires), who has gone missing as she was conducting experiments deep in the forest. Desperate to bring her back to safe grounds, Martin and forest scout Alma (Ellora Torchia) go on a two-day trek to the woods (uh-oh).

We just know things are headed south for these two when their camp is suddenly raided in the dark. They wake up the next morning with massive headaches, bruised faces and an ugly-looking gash on Martin’s foot. Desperate for help, they continue their trek, and luckily, or maybe not, bump into forest-dweller Zach (Reece Shearsmith), who lives in the timber-soaked area via a large cozy tent.

Zach, although seeming like a good dude at first, it turns out, is a psychotic freak. An eco-obsessed loner obsessed with witchcraft. It’s not too long after that he drugs up Martin and Olivia and ties them up, with the intention of performing sick rituals on them. The film, at that point, is very strong with tension, there is a desperation that if our two protagonists don’t escape Zach’s wrath then they will most likely die by the end of their ordeal.

The folk-horror elements are subdued at that point, and the atmosphere built up to a tee, as Wheatley doesn’t overcomplicate his hand by having a narrowly efficient focus on the hostage situation. It’s only around the one-hour mark that the film starts to lose its focus, running out of steam as it moves on to Dr Wendle’s camp and her bizarre experiments. She, too, is obsessed with a female folk spirit lurking somewhere in the woods. It all culminates with an anticlimactic finale, filled with a cloud of fungal spores, don’t ask, not to mention menacing stones, ringworm rashes, and witchy textbooks.

It’s all delivered to the viewer with a smack-dab of exposition, but even with the information overload, it turns out to be nothing more than pseudo-kitschy mumbo jumbo, not very well laid out in understandable or coherent ways. Wheatley gets lost in his obsessions, the mystical-claptrap, completely forgetting that we might not actually care about it as much as the characters themselves. By the time the climactic blood-soaked finale hits, Wheatley, who is so desperately trying to make another “Field in England,” has lost our attention completely.

SCORE: C