In The EarthTo understand our world means to be exposed to all of the splendor and terror that accompanies it. In the Earth is a horror movie about a scientist named Martin Lowery (Joel Fry) who visits a remote woodland outpost in England in search of a research colleague (and former lover) named Olivia Wendle (Hayley Squires), who has since gone quiet since her sojourn deep into the forest. Accompanied by Alma (Ellora Torchia), a forest ranger, the two are ambushed in the night along their journey, yet are later offered food, drink, and shelter by a man called Zach (Reece Shearsmith), only to discover that Zach has terrible reasons for dwelling in the dark and mysterious forest.
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Written and directed by Ben Wheatley, In the Earth was reportedly written over about fifteen days in September 2020, right as COVID-19 was in full swing. Subsequently, this movie is set in a world that is reeling from the aftermath of a pandemic, although the nature of it is non-specific. The safeguards used by the ranger station (among other things) suggest that it is more severe, however, since the intrusive nature of the tests designed to verify that Martin isn't infected is greater than even we have experienced at large. Yet the larger plot of In the Earth has little to nothing to do with a pandemic, but is instead about communing with a mysterious force ostensibly dwelling within the forest. So why even set the stage with this as a part of the backdrop? My suspicion is that it is meant to frame the proverbial "mental state" of In the Earth, mirroring how our society has succumbed to distrust and paranoia in this post-COVID world. At the risk of deviating from discussion of the movie, consider how people panicked in various ways in the wake of COVID. This includes everything from xenophobia to panic buying of essential supplies to mask mandates and sterilization protocols. Fear is the primary operator here, and this unsettling anxiety drove people to wildly illogical conclusions in an attempt to make sense of their terrifying new world. It is the same for Zach and (ultimately) Olivia, who believe that there exists some preternatural presence in the forest emanating from a menhir with a baseball-sized hole in it, its origins unknown. Of course Martin and Alma have no inkling of what either of Zach and Olivia has been exposed to in the wilds near Bristol, but they learn in the harshest of ways. What is interesting about Martin and (especially so) Alma is that despite being educated, they are surprisingly ill-equipped to deal with the forest. Martin clearly has never assembled a tent, and when they are attacked and their shoes are stolen, they trudge through the undergrowth barefoot with predictable results. This behavior seems surprising for people who are supposed to be experts about nature. Martin is a scientist researching crop cultivation, though he appears to be a total neophyte when it comes to rural life. Even the people at the forest outpost impose tests and protocol that can't possibly be relevant to sanitizing whatever plague is at large, like encouraging exercise or writing in a diary--but it makes everyone feel safer to do it, anyway. Like us after COVID, Martin and Alma--and really everyone else--appears to have just been faking their expertise all along, and are metaphorically naked in the face of the real terrors of nature.
Once Martin and Alma encounter Zach, the true nature of the story unfolds, only hinted at in the forest lodge when Martin observes some primitive wall art depicting a woodland entity called "Parnag Fegg". E. M. Forster wrote in "Howards End" that England has no true mythology of its own, merely a collection of witches and fairies. This statement came to mind when watching In the Earth in as much as Parnag Fegg is a legend that varies depending on who tells it. It is neither god nor titan, but is depicted as some primal force, deeply entrenched in nature instead of manifesting from some other realm of existence. Reminiscent of other pagan horror movies like Midsommar, In the Earth drops hints as to what Parnag Fegg is through this wall art...sort of. While scenes depicted in the tapestries in Midsommar are made manifest in that movie--as Zach attempts to do in this one--this art seems to originate solely from myth, and isn't truly representative of whatever is in the forest that causes the strangeness that follows. In other words, those myths of fairies and witches may very well be how the natives of England tried to make sense of the unexplained in their lives...as it has been with mythology around the world. Zach believes that he can communicate with Parnag Fegg through "art", preferring photography and using human beings as props. Initially pleasant and affable, Zach reveals himself to be little more than a psycho, drugging Martin and Alma and subjecting them to torture. But when Martin and Alma finally unite with Olivia, they learn that her mission--and her reason for cutting off communication with the outside world--is fundamentally the same as Zach's. She also believes that she can "communicate" with the forest through "sound and light", employing a vast array of stereo equipment and strobe lights to achieve this. In the Earth capitalizes on her methodology to drive up the tension in key moments of rising action, creating nightmarish set pieces, like when a wounded Zach chases Martin with an axe.
Olivia's experiment is a wild extrapolation of her and Martin's original study into what is called a mycorrhizal network, which is at the "root" (sorry for the bad pun) of the forest's influence. A mycorrhizal network is like a subterranean blanket of fungi that transfer nutrients to plants, and in turn is sustained itself in a symbiotic relationship. It also has the uncanny characteristic of identifying plants on its network that are unwell and diverting nutrients to it to help it thrive. To put it another way, it is the "muscle" that connects the skeletal framework of plant life, and can stretch for vast distances, earning it the nickname of the "Wood Wide Web". Martin's interest in it was solely (and nobly) to explore how this could be utilized to encourage crops to thrive--potentially a necessary skill now in this post-plague world, where the roads are devoid of automobiles, and where everyone in the cities stays indoors. Yet despite her scientific background, Olivia (somehow) procured an unabridged copy of "Malleus Maleficarum" (a regular MacGuffin in horror movies for being essentially an occult encyclopedia about demons), and has since come to believe that it holds the secret to communicating with the network via the menhir around which she bases her camp. It soon becomes clear at the moment that she divulges this (earlier even) that she's sliding down the same slope of madness as Zach. Like Zach, she employs rituals to make sense of this heretofore unexplored aspect of nature, ranging from liquefied mushrooms acting as a "sacrament" to the technology she straps to the trees and positions around camp to try to commune with the "spirit". What is most interesting, however, is that the forest does seem predisposed to ensnare Martin within its folds, as Olivia indicates it did with Zach. Both men received an impulse to bring them to the forest, which Olivia attributes to a kind of psychic network the spirit possesses. Zach previously commented that Parnag Fegg was supposed to be a necromancer driven into the woods by medieval folk, never to be seen again. Olivia's research suggests that something more chemical is at work behind these legends, which is evidenced by several strange spores that give off an audible "sigh" and expel a hallucinogenic fog that causes its victims to experience fevered, kaleidoscopic visions. This mist encircles Olivia's camp once Martin and Alma arrive, and closes in on them, as though it were sentient and trying to trap them. Of course there is no logical reason to believe that the menhir with the hole in it should serve as a focus for a mycorrhizal network, but this is where In the Earth cultivates that seed of speculation germinating in the audience. Could all of this--even the mysterious pandemic--really be something demonic or alien? Or is the real terror meant to be how we crumple in the face of what has always been there beneath our feet, and like Pandora's Box, our inquisitive nature and need to rationalize our world transforms our proverbial cradle (the Earth) into our greatest nemesis?
Recommended for: Fans of a horror movie that explores the terror of unexplored nature and the dangers it presents when humanity is exposed to it and is unprepared to cope with its seemingly alien nature. In the Earth resembles many independent psychological horror movies by way of its small cast and focusing on a primal fear--what dangers lurk in the woods--but its topical conceit should make a bigger impact on audiences in a world where fear of COVID still runs rampant.
Once Martin and Alma encounter Zach, the true nature of the story unfolds, only hinted at in the forest lodge when Martin observes some primitive wall art depicting a woodland entity called "Parnag Fegg". E. M. Forster wrote in "Howards End" that England has no true mythology of its own, merely a collection of witches and fairies. This statement came to mind when watching In the Earth in as much as Parnag Fegg is a legend that varies depending on who tells it. It is neither god nor titan, but is depicted as some primal force, deeply entrenched in nature instead of manifesting from some other realm of existence. Reminiscent of other pagan horror movies like Midsommar, In the Earth drops hints as to what Parnag Fegg is through this wall art...sort of. While scenes depicted in the tapestries in Midsommar are made manifest in that movie--as Zach attempts to do in this one--this art seems to originate solely from myth, and isn't truly representative of whatever is in the forest that causes the strangeness that follows. In other words, those myths of fairies and witches may very well be how the natives of England tried to make sense of the unexplained in their lives...as it has been with mythology around the world. Zach believes that he can communicate with Parnag Fegg through "art", preferring photography and using human beings as props. Initially pleasant and affable, Zach reveals himself to be little more than a psycho, drugging Martin and Alma and subjecting them to torture. But when Martin and Alma finally unite with Olivia, they learn that her mission--and her reason for cutting off communication with the outside world--is fundamentally the same as Zach's. She also believes that she can "communicate" with the forest through "sound and light", employing a vast array of stereo equipment and strobe lights to achieve this. In the Earth capitalizes on her methodology to drive up the tension in key moments of rising action, creating nightmarish set pieces, like when a wounded Zach chases Martin with an axe.
Olivia's experiment is a wild extrapolation of her and Martin's original study into what is called a mycorrhizal network, which is at the "root" (sorry for the bad pun) of the forest's influence. A mycorrhizal network is like a subterranean blanket of fungi that transfer nutrients to plants, and in turn is sustained itself in a symbiotic relationship. It also has the uncanny characteristic of identifying plants on its network that are unwell and diverting nutrients to it to help it thrive. To put it another way, it is the "muscle" that connects the skeletal framework of plant life, and can stretch for vast distances, earning it the nickname of the "Wood Wide Web". Martin's interest in it was solely (and nobly) to explore how this could be utilized to encourage crops to thrive--potentially a necessary skill now in this post-plague world, where the roads are devoid of automobiles, and where everyone in the cities stays indoors. Yet despite her scientific background, Olivia (somehow) procured an unabridged copy of "Malleus Maleficarum" (a regular MacGuffin in horror movies for being essentially an occult encyclopedia about demons), and has since come to believe that it holds the secret to communicating with the network via the menhir around which she bases her camp. It soon becomes clear at the moment that she divulges this (earlier even) that she's sliding down the same slope of madness as Zach. Like Zach, she employs rituals to make sense of this heretofore unexplored aspect of nature, ranging from liquefied mushrooms acting as a "sacrament" to the technology she straps to the trees and positions around camp to try to commune with the "spirit". What is most interesting, however, is that the forest does seem predisposed to ensnare Martin within its folds, as Olivia indicates it did with Zach. Both men received an impulse to bring them to the forest, which Olivia attributes to a kind of psychic network the spirit possesses. Zach previously commented that Parnag Fegg was supposed to be a necromancer driven into the woods by medieval folk, never to be seen again. Olivia's research suggests that something more chemical is at work behind these legends, which is evidenced by several strange spores that give off an audible "sigh" and expel a hallucinogenic fog that causes its victims to experience fevered, kaleidoscopic visions. This mist encircles Olivia's camp once Martin and Alma arrive, and closes in on them, as though it were sentient and trying to trap them. Of course there is no logical reason to believe that the menhir with the hole in it should serve as a focus for a mycorrhizal network, but this is where In the Earth cultivates that seed of speculation germinating in the audience. Could all of this--even the mysterious pandemic--really be something demonic or alien? Or is the real terror meant to be how we crumple in the face of what has always been there beneath our feet, and like Pandora's Box, our inquisitive nature and need to rationalize our world transforms our proverbial cradle (the Earth) into our greatest nemesis?
Recommended for: Fans of a horror movie that explores the terror of unexplored nature and the dangers it presents when humanity is exposed to it and is unprepared to cope with its seemingly alien nature. In the Earth resembles many independent psychological horror movies by way of its small cast and focusing on a primal fear--what dangers lurk in the woods--but its topical conceit should make a bigger impact on audiences in a world where fear of COVID still runs rampant.