Sundance 2021 | Wheatley Revels in Isolation with "In the Earth"
7/12 ForReel Score | 3/5 Stars
“A journey into the heart of darkness” – that’s how the plots of Ben Wheatley’s films are often described, and his latest effort, In the Earth, arrives as no exception. Like Kill List, A Field in England, and High-Rise before it, In the Earth explodes terrain both physical and mental, turning the familiar into the strange and menacing as characters are ripped from logic and serenity, transposed into fearsome new states of mind. It should come as no surprise that Wheatley’s inspiration was the dark heart newsreel of 2020 that distorted our daily reality.
The film is not about COVID, Wheatley stated in his Sundance introduction, “but it doesn’t ignore it.” He began his script at the beginning of the outbreak, and filming took place in isolation and secrecy during our first socially distanced summer. An unnamed virus in the film also lurks just outside the edges of the screen. The story concerns Martin (Joel Fry) and Alma (Ellora Torchia), set off on an ill-fated nature walk into an anonymous stretch of lush wilderness to seek out Martin’s mentor in mycorrhizal research. The two are quickly derailed when the first person they come across does not turn out to be Martin’s mentor, and when they accept the stranger’s herbal drink (has Torchia learned nothing from Midsommar?).
Much like A Field in England, this film makes use of a meager budget, a small group of actors, and a bucolic slice of the UK to tell its twisted tale of psychological horror. Wheatley seems right at home using this stripped-down canvas to enact his anarchic brand violence against body, mind, and the film matter itself. He takes to the helm as editor again and lets his frenetic style do the talking, as opposed to his thinly plotted script, which sometimes nags at you with its shoddiness. Strobe effects in the film’s latter half add to the sense of delirium, to the point where you find yourself forgetting what the main characters set out to do in the first place – though, maybe that’s the point.
Talking to someone about Wheatley recently, we came to the agreement that the director’s modus operandi is to irritate and terrorize his audiences – that’s also the point. In the Earth is a micro-budget experiment in maximizing feelings of frustration and disorientation, then further compounding those feelings with the current zeitgeist of fear instilled in us by our pandemic. Hayley Squires and Reece Shearsmith give suitably unnerving performances as quarantine-sick detractors from society. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Joel Fry, who remains awkwardly stiff and unflinching throughout. There is also something to be said about the lack of hair and makeup detail in this film, which keeps the players looking far too kempt for people stuck out in the woods.
Minor gripes aside, though, this Wheatley outing accomplishes quite a bit of world-crushing terror with so little. It’s a movie that crawls under your skin and scrambles your brains. This is not necessarily something you can recommend to the squeamish or easily antagonized, but those looking for a viscerally immersive experience can expect the fidgety paranoia they are after. Whether you’re willing to forgive the film’s lazy, obviously hurried writing and take the dark heart journey – that’s up to you.
