Force of Nature

IN THE EARTH (2021)

"It can get a bit funny in the woods sometimes;" from sacrificial sites to otherworldly portals, standing stones have a firm history in British film and television, hinting at the ancient and the macabre.

BEN Wheatley's IN THE EARTH is a slow-burning folk horror freak-out referred to as his "lockdown movie." Conceived and made during the Coronavirus pandemic, it is not just a companion piece to Wheatley's KILL LIST and A FIELD IN ENGLAND, it is a film which is umbilically linked to them. This mirrors the narrative, that in a virus-stricken world fertile soils are sought to increase crop production. A standing stone is discovered to be the epicentre of an underground network; attempting to communicate by sound and light, can humans actually talk to nature? And if so, what would the inherent features have to say to us? Scientist Martin Lowery (Joel Fry) and forest scout Alma (Ellora Torchia) venture into the woods with equipment for Dr Olivia Wendle (Hayley Squires), Martin's former colleague and ex-lover who is researching Mycorrhiza, the symbiotic association between fungus and plant roots. However, this two-day trek is interrupted by Zach (Reece Shearsmith), a man living in the terrain who inducts them into his own world of ritual.

Using a template of John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN for what can be achieved with a microbudget and a fifteen day shoot, IN THE EARTH makes the most of its natural production and 2:39:1 frame, very much an "outdoor" picture to reintroduce normality after the shock of Covid. Visually beautiful but awkwardly flat, there are too many threads to form a nuanced experience: we have the BLAIR WITCH psychology of Parnag Fegg; SAW extreme violence; trippy ALTERED STATES sequences; science against myth; and dull back stories (Zach is also Wendle's ex-husband). Of the performers Shearsmith is unsurprisingly the highlight, providing the stand-out scene of literal toe-curling horror. Torchia is a believable guide, but Fry is lamely introverted, and Squires too wide-eyed from the get-go to be believed or trusted.

"Everything seems to just keep us here;" Reece Shearsmith is Zach, a fusion of Robert Plant and Jack Torrance.

Yet Wheatley is not leading to any rational conclusions, rather a heavy dose of weirdness expertly described by critic Peter Bradshaw as like "the last crashing cord of The Beatles' A Day in the Life." IN THE EARTH not just mimics woodland horror, it illustrates the pastoral gothic of British creatives from Algernon Blackwood to Nigel Kneale and 1970s Hauntology. Although there are overtures to THE STONE TAPE and even CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, allusions to Blackwood are particularly apt. The writer and broadcaster wrote stories not to frighten but to create awe with alternative consciousnesses and creations, imaginative treatments of possibilities outside our normal human range. For example, in The Willows, part of his 1907 collection The Listener and Other Stories, the environment is personified with threatening and powerful characteristics; and The Wendigo, first published in 1910's The Lost Valley and Other Stories, details spiritual possession during a hunting trip.