Film Review: In the Earth (Wheatley, 2021)

With In the Earth, Ben Wheatley returns to his gritty horror genre roots following his lavish if underwhelming adaptation of Rebecca for Netflix, a return which is admirable for its mid-lockdown guerrilla approach to filmmaking (shooting between UK lockdowns in late 2020) if not entirely successful in the final verdict.

Joel Fry plays Martin Lowery, a scientist venturing into the dark recesses of an ancient English woodland around which security checks have been established to prevent further contamination and spread of an illness that appears to be Covid-19 in all but name. Journeying into the forest alongside national park ranger Alma (Ellora Torchia), Lowery sets out to reunite with fellow scientist and former romantic partner Olivia Wendle (Hayley Squires) who is conducting research upon the mycorrhiza – a kind of natural hive-mind – that inhabits the woodland. Living in amongst the trees we also find Reece Shearsmith’s fanatical Zach, a hermit like figure dedicated to the forest which he views as something of a spiritual entity.

Echoing elements of Alex Garland’s Annihilation, Tarkovsky’s Stalker and in the film’s denouement, Kurbick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Wheatley weaves a tale of hallucinogenic horror filtered through cosmic Lovecraftian contemplation that rapidly builds tension from its opening scenes. Equal parts enthralling and frustrating, it is a film which gives its audience little in the way of tangible fact, with allusions toward a local superstition – the woodland spirit Parnag Fegg – and a clear thematic divide binary between science and religion being two of the most definable elements given to the audience to make sense of. In the final instance, interpretation of what exactly is going on here is left resolutely to the audience.

Each of the four key players give captivating performances, although the strangely muted way in which Martin and Alma respond to certain situations – a kind of willing resignation to submit themselves to the abject horror at play – for me hinted towards a strand of social commentary Wheatley is aiming for, echoing how nations across the globe sleepwalked into the pandemic with little realisation of, or resistance to, the full horror that was unfolding. This slightly somnambulistic atmosphere, however, foregrounds a certain degree of artifice (or at least emotional distance) which makes the film’s characters feeling slightly underdeveloped and as a result less engaging than one would want. The director himself has said that the film is explicitly about the current moment, and an early scene in which Alma naively suggests that people will quickly forget what the pandemic was like underlines the film’s central consideration of how humanity copes with trauma and existential threat.

Arguably, some of this thematic nuance is lost in the film’s final act which goes for broke in visual terms with its folk-horror take on the stargate sequence from 2001, but loses a clear sense of what exactly it is trying to say. Perhaps the visual quality of the film will be enough for most viewers, with DoP Nick Gillespie’s mesmerising cinematography stealing the show, but In the Earth’s loose threads and uncertain characterisation only serve to frustratingly hint at what more this film could have achieved.