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March 28, 2024, 05:36:57 PM

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In the Earth (2021) - Ben Wheatley, Reece Shearsmith

Started by BlodwynPig, April 23, 2021, 08:40:56 AM

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BlodwynPig

Surprised this hasn't touched down on CaB yet. Only just found out about it while looking at Clint Mansell 'news'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Earth

Average ratings, but it sounds fantastic (hopefully not too cliched).

SteveDave


zomgmouse


Noodle Lizard

Can't wait to see Reece get prickly over criticisms on Twitter.

BlodwynPig

Wheatley burned out long ago, it seems (after reading some opinions*)

*other opinions hopefully available

Small Man Big Horse

https://366weirdmovies.com/capsule-in-the-earth-2021/ liked it but I'm a bit exhausted by the uneven quality of his work, so a lot of people will have to praise it highly before I'm prepared to give it a shot.

BlodwynPig

Quote from: Small Man Big Horse on April 23, 2021, 08:50:33 PM
https://366weirdmovies.com/capsule-in-the-earth-2021/ liked it but I'm a bit exhausted by the uneven quality of his work, so a lot of people will have to praise it highly before I'm prepared to give it a shot.

You could be the first to praise it highly and then others will take the leap?


dissolute ocelot

More excited by the prospect of Meg 2: The Sharkening Trench, to be honest.


SteveDave

Quote from: SteveDave on April 23, 2021, 10:09:32 AM
The ending's going to be shit.

I'm never wrong. It's a curse.

I liked it a lot more than everything else he's done other than "Sightseers" though. He didn't write that one.

Mister Six

Ha, whereas I think Sightseers is his best film (that I've seen, at least). All of the rest have felt a bit underbaked in the script department. Free Fire is my second favourite of his films, although it's spoiled by there being zero sense of where everyone is in relation to everyone else - which, given the nature of the film, is a fatal flaw.

MoreauVasz

Quote from: Mister Six on June 10, 2021, 12:28:18 AM
Ha, whereas I think Sightseers is his best film (that I've seen, at least). All of the rest have felt a bit underbaked in the script department

This is what I think too... He always has ideas, and his films always have a distinctive look and a vibe to them but he really struggles to produce satisfying narratives.  Even Sightseers lacks a psychologically plausible ending. It's a nice image but it conceals the fact that the character and story had, by the end of the film, gone completely off the rails. This means that all of his films feel somewhat shallow.

Noodle Lizard

Copied from the horror thread:

I saw it last night and liked about half of it - as in it flitted constantly between being quite good/effective and quite bad/shite. Overall, I'm not sure the former was enough to sustain the latter. On the plus side, Reece Shearsmith was predictably splendid, it often looked and sounded nice and the concept itself was really interesting - at least potentially. Sadly, they didn't really expand upon the promising ideas once they'd been introduced, opting instead for "EXTENDED TRIPPY BITS", and the fact that the protagonists were so incredibly dull and poorly-acted (at least in the case of Joel Fry) made it very difficult to care once shit went bonkers.

On that note, I couldn't believe it when I realised Wheatley had decided to go down that path again for the ending. It's long been argued that he doesn't know how to end his films, but to repeat the exact same cop-out from a previous film more or less wholesale is almost unforgivable. I was always skeptical he was quite as brilliant as some were saying in the wake of Kill List thru A Field In England, and I think he's really showing his limitations now.

Granted, the turnaround from writing to completion seems to have been very short, so it makes sense that it feels rushed, uneven and unfinished. But I don't know if that's an excuse is it? Nobody was forcing him to rush it.

neveragain

Full agreement here. I was very disappointed overall. Reece's scenes were great but over far too soon. Wish it had just been a film about Zach titting about in the woods.

Actually, one point of disagreement. I didn't mind Joel Fry. Maybe it's fond memories from Trollied but he was alright for me. By no means spectacular but the character didn't have much depth. The pair of them were a very dull couple and hard to care about.

SteveDave

One bit I thought that was never explained is that Alma was shot with an arrow by Zach wasn't she? Then she appears in the "good" camp and is fine.

I did think that Reece Shearsmith had something of the (now times) Robert Plant about him with the hair and beard.

purlieu

My post from the Horror thread:

Watched In the Earth, and if I ever needed an example of a film that's less than the sum of its parts, it would be this. I liked almost everything about it, but none of it worked together at all. The folk horror, the sci-fi nature stuff, even the 'trippy' bits, all great, but none of it ended up being satisfying. The best bits were the sound design, the
Spoiler alert
Cafe Oto experimental synth gig in the woods
[close]
and Reece Shearsmith, especially his performance of the film's standout line,
Spoiler alert
"No, I'm going to need to go to a hospital," which actually had me in fits of laughter.
[close]

Also fucking hell I am so bored of Tangerine Dream/John Carpenter-style synthwave scores at this point. This has been going on for longer than these sort of soundtracks were in vogue when they were actually original, and while the style might suit the likes of Beyond the Black Rainbow and Stranger Things, I really cannot be arsed with this tedium when it turns up in stuff like this and The Walking Dead where it jars so heavily with the mood of what's going on on screen.

chveik

Quote from: purlieu on June 11, 2021, 03:18:40 PM
Also fucking hell I am so bored of Tangerine Dream/John Carpenter-style synthwave scores at this point. This has been going on for longer than these sort of soundtracks were in vogue when they were actually original, and while the style might suit the likes of Beyond the Black Rainbow and Stranger Things, I really cannot be arsed with this tedium when it turns up in stuff like this and The Walking Dead where it jars so heavily with the mood of what's going on on screen.

yeah they could use some inspiration from the Morricone/Nicolai school of horror films music.

mjwilson

Well I enjoyed this one. A couple of arseholes in the cinema didn't though and were just laughing their heads off at everything, whether it was funny bits or gory bits. (Fortunately they left.)

Glebe


BlodwynPig


badaids


It should be called Lionel Ritchie of the Forest.

zomgmouse

Do people think Fegg was a reference to Palin & Jones' Dr Fegg because that's all I could think of and it was very funny to think of Dr Fegg as the menacing spirit of the forest. (OR IS DR FEGG A REFERENCE TO A FOREST DEMON)

Anyway in general: I loved this. Wheatley in his absolute element(s). Folk horror, small cast. Even watching this on a small screen brought back memories of the feelings of watching Kill List and A Field in England (which I think this is his best since) in the cinema. Trippy nature sequences. "People go a bit funny in the woods". Yes please. Sign me up. Lush, creepy goodness. Yum yum.

Quite obviously a pandemic film but that's woven so nicely into it, and I liked that it harnesses the fears of sickness AND the fears of outside that staying indoors generate. Knows exactly when to throw in new elements. At a certain point starts to run out of steam a bit, not sure it really nails the third act (great final few minutes though), but overall, great stuff. Enjoyed the parallels drawn between folk legends and rituals and modern scientific eco ways of attempting to understand nature.

Ooh how about I got this I got this.................... Outside No. 9

neveragain

Reading various articles pointed out an interesting thing about how the film has three sections and each is based upon people making up stories to explain the world around them (the park ranger types theorising about Dr Wendell's disappearance, Zach with his mystical bollocks and
Spoiler alert
then the Dr with her pseudoscience/Nigel Kneale stuff
[close]
). That - and some fine visuals - aside, I still don't think the film works outside of the Zach scenes. Even those are a bit lacking in space to develop. It's ridiculous how quickly we go from
Spoiler alert
'mysterious beating'
[close]
to 'let's trust this mysterious man', and similarly the dopey duo
Spoiler alert
get drugged
[close]
fairly quickly.

thugler

It was quite bad. Good visuals and sound design etc but the narrative was exceptionally stupid. People accept the most nonsensical explanations for things without question.