Unearthed Movie Review, Trailer, Film Still and Poster

U.S. 2008
Director: Matthew Leutwyler
Cast: Emmanuelle Vaugier, Luke Goss, Russell Means, Beau Garrett
Release Date: November 9th 2007
Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour 29 minutes 39 secs

The Movie Review

Unearthed film still 1


UNEARTHED
Storyline:
Cast:
Ending:
Overall:

I respect After Dark Effort for picking up indie movies which usually have unique theme for the audiences, however, moviegoers also has the right to see a really good one. And I was just thinking, if there were only 5 or 6 which actually entertaining, then why did After Dark had to round it up to 8?

In a remote town somewhere in the desert, the townspeople live normally until a truck which carries gas is attacked by an unknown creature. The troubled and drunk Sheriff Annie (Emmanuelle Vaugier) runs to the location along with his deputy only to find something that looks like a small, wormy and slimy creature and the truck driver is nowhere to be found. The next day, Sheriff gets a report of one of the resident's cow being munched from inside.

Meanwhile, Sheriff Annie's grandpa (Russell Means) who also runs a gas station is currently helping 4 people deserted in that town for running out of gas. Later that night, suddenly a creature appears and attacks the house where the guests are staying. Sheriff Annie manages to at least save the day (the night more precisely) and then takes the remaining survivors to the nearest hill. Will the creature find them? And what kind a creature is that really?

As with Monster flick, the figure of the Monster is at utmost important. In Unearthed, the creature is....just downright fake, but what the saddest thing is, that the monster is strikingly similar to another 2006 independent movie called Guardians. The different is, that while Guardians nears "So-Bad-It's-Good" area, Unearthed has more serious tone all over but failed to deliver serious terror or fear. Gladly the overall performance of Emanuelle (SAW II), Luke Goss and the rest of the cast is convincing. That Includes Beau Garrett who already used to make frightened expression as we saw in Turistas. In a nutshell, the acting quality of all cast is far better than most movies sharing the same theme and the same CGI quality. Still, I have to say that Emanuelle is a miscast, she's good but she doesn't seem fit to be the sheriff.

But the pace...what a drag. There are many void moments, and this is absolutely not a character-driven horror film. And when the excitement of terror finally shows up, well, it's not really exciting. The monster is shy or should I say the CGI quality is "shy", surely if the monster dares to show itself up, close and personal, we could simply say "ah, that's so fake".

Enough with the bashing, being a horror monster flick, Unearthed still could give the audience fun. Such as the gore scenes, like splitting head, the intestines, but also disgusting wormy creatures eating on flesh. And the soundtrack is quite effective, only that sometimes it's used for boo scares.

Unearthed is not a bad movie, but it's just not good enough to be labelled as After Dark selection, and probably somehow ruins HorrorFest credibility. In short, this film is a bore.
Unearthed film still 2