A southern gothic movie that finds a sweet spot of horror in its final throes, Unearth (2020) is directed by John C. Lyons and Dorota Swies. Screening as part of the 2020 online Fantasia Film festival, this farm-based thriller is on the melodramatic side for the majority of its runtime, but unexpectedly unleashes something unearthly into its script that gives a jolt to the film’s otherwise languid pace. The movie is saved by its cinematography, capturing the arcane beauty of the south, as well as the stellar performances from its cast.

Adrienne Barbeau as tenacious, hard-nosed ranch-head Kathryn was a total scene-stealer, swirling her moonshine and licking her teeth at the sign of encroaching capitalism. The rest of the ensemble does very well too, each performance capturing the mood and attitude of their struggle as American farmers. Writers Kelsey Goldberg and John C. Lyons crafted a tragic story that precariously and intricately intertwined two neighboring families, bonded by proximity and torn asunder when their paths begin to diverge down different roads, only to meet at the same dead end.

In the film, George (Marc Blucas), a divorced father of two girls, struggles to keep his farm and auto-business afloat after customers and his land run dry. His neighbors, likewise, experience economic strain, but make a living through their family knack for farming and their small roadside stand. After they make an offer on George’s land, to ensure he can make ends meet he instead agrees to a contract with a gas company to drill on his land. A year later, the water has turned yellow and the royalty checks have not dug George’s family out of the pit of debt. Faced with little options, George considers killing himself, but not before something far more deadly than poverty becomes unearthed and begins to enter the minds and bodies of each family member.

Once all hell finally breaks loose I was at a loss for how we got there — the climax felt rushed and the ending was likewise abrupt. For a movie that takes such a long time to get to the point, it didn’t deliver on the scare factor. Even with all of the blood and the disorienting camera editing, the monster was still clearly missing from the story, which made it seem more like the infected were having a chemical reaction to consuming tainted water, though one character references “it” controlling her. I thought I was in for something Lovecraftian to happen, but the movie never quite got there. This might be due to a low budget, but there is no excuse for allowing the script to be so ambiguous that there does not appear to be an actual threat. It seemed like more special effects could have been used to give life to the monster, it felt like the movie was missing a reveal-scene to show whether the monster was something from outer space or something demonic that was unleashed. For a good while, the movie was a tragic drama about struggling farm families, and then within 5 minutes, the water is bad and everyone subsequently goes crazy; basically the movie spent way too much time on explaining their struggles and not nearly enough time introducing, properly building, and executing the horror.

Even for a southern gothic movie, Unearth was quite slow-paced — it didn’t necessarily drag, however, it is not until the last 20 minutes that the horror begins, and the first hour of the movie had no inkling of this kind of ending. If I had gone into this screening not knowing that Unearth is being marketed as horror I would think that this movie doesn’t have direction on what it wants to be — it is trying to be metaphorical and show that fracking makes the land bad and therefore only bad things will be sown from it, but that can be done without conjuring shoe-horning in a monster. This sharp turn to horror seems out of place because the detour is so brief, the final girl did not have to struggle enough, and the production of the monster doesn’t rise to the occasion, culminating in the threat to the family seeming unreal. Surprisingly, though the movie slow-paced, the melodramatic bits were the most enjoyable parts of the movie to me because the acting is so spot-on — it is cathartic to watch the characters experience such hardship and the cast definitely does the brunt of the work in carrying this movie to fruition.

MOVIE RATING — 6.5 out of 10