Unearthed

Introduction

I'm not a huge fan of horror films, it must be said. I generally find them to be lacking in plot and always looking for the shock shots rather than developing a story or character. Most horror films I've seen tend to follow the same formula of knocking off multiple characters one at a time, Unearthed is no different.


Luke Goss, sans Grolsch bottle tops, is a mysterious Indian architect who uncovers a poorer relative of HR Geiger's Alien monster that proceeds to wreak havoc in a small town that just happens to be cut off after an oil tanker crashes and explodes.


The town is served by alcoholic Sheriff Annie (Emmanuelle Vaugier) who is nursing a tragic secret through a haze of whiskey and whatever else she can lay her hands on. Nodin (Tonantzin Carmelo) is also an Indian but not that mysterious; she's the resident botanist who can tell from a glance that DNA is alien and is expert at extracting Uranium from rocks whilst apparently being completely radioactive.

Also in town are four complete strangers who you know nothing about and quite frankly you don't need to either.

Visual

For the most part (i.e after the introductory first 15-20 minutes...) this film is too dark, it's really hard to see what's going on most of the time, although that well may be a blessing in disguise.

Once more Icon provide a DVD-R as a check disc and then proceed to put a bloody great counter on the screen and then an intermittent banner right through the middle. Cheers, guys.

Audio

Sound design is a bit off on this disc, the dialogue is too low and the music is too loud.

Extras

None on my check disc but I'm assured that there are extras on the retail version.

Overall

Well, at least it was only an hour and a half long. To be honest, it may have been better if the quality of the disc was better, Icon hadn't decided that reviewers are quite happy to watch their films with great wads of alphanumeric characters in their vision, the cinematographer had paid his electric bill to his lighting department, the director had decided to actually do some post production voiceovers and the writer (who is also the director) had written some decent dialogue. Other than that, not bad.


On the plus side, Emmanuelle Vaugier is fine but wasted. Luke Goss is kind of ok, but he doesn't really do much except wave his most important archaeological tool (his shotgun) about.

The monster appears to be all CGI, bar maybe a couple of close-ups, but it's not that impressive CGI either. It appears to be the Alien monster but with a smaller head and a couple of extra appendages, not to mention some kind of mini-monster tag match partner. The deaths are all well telegraphed and thankfully are pretty swift and unimpressive overall.

Not my thing…