… of 2021
"Made during a pandemic, with a fictional pandemic slithering around a story that taps into both the spiritual powers of nature and the mental effects of isolation, In the Earth uniquely captures the mood we've been clawing our way through for nearly a year now. It's freaky, but it feels alarmingly relatable too.
Ben Wheatley's (High-Rise) slick Netflix production Rebecca might have been a misfire, but the writer-director is back on more familiar turf with In the Earth, which has tendrils of his earlier films (especially Kill List, Sightseers, and A Field in England) curling around its DNA. That said, this is very much its own thing, and it's the kind of movie you're better off watching without knowing the twists its plot is going to take.
In the Earth begins as Martin (Joel Fry) arrives at a rural lodge that's the park-services HQ for the surrounding land; one of his scientific colleagues, who's been doing field research for an extended period, has stopped checking in from her post deep in the forest, and he's there to pay her a visit. At the lodge, there are all-too-familiar protocols on display—face masks, hand sanitizer stations, awkward jokes about how it's nice to see an unfamiliar face after so long, and even a disinfectant spray-down and medical check for Martin. We don't get a lot of details, but there's…something plague-like and covid-y out there that's shifted everyone's definition of normal around, and "a couple of people died in the village."…"
Main page
link
Amicalement
Armand
reports from the final California Gen Con...
