Main cast: Adrienne Barbeau (Kathryn Dolan), Marc Blucas (George Lomack), Brooke Sorenson (Kim Lomack), Allison McAtee (Christina Dolan), Rachel McKeon (Heather Lomack), PJ Marshall (Tom Dolan), and Monica Wyche (Aubrey Dolan)
Directors: John C Lyons and Dorota Swies
Unearth was first released in conjunction with Earth Day, and it’s about what happens to two families in neighboring farms, the Dolans and the Lomacks, when a natural gas company comes to do some lovely fracking in the area. Well, good for the people behind this movie in trying to tell people that fracking is bad and fuel is bad and everything is bad for the environment…. while at the same time insisting that farmers need to be left alone to do their thing without their lands being bought up by greedy corporations. I wonder how they think farm machinery run if fuel and other sources of non-solar power are so bad for the environment. Then again, Hollywood champagne activitists—they probably need the farmers to be farmers because someone needs to grow all the soy for these champagne activists’ soy latte, after all.
Sadly, despite being marketed as an eco-horror movie, anything resembling horror only takes part after the one hour mark, and even then, the movie blew its budget on a few scenes of horror effects. Everything else is just people arguing, talking, quarreling, running around in their crop fields, falling down, and repeat the whole thing over and over.
The cast isn’t bad, but the characters are either unlikable or imbecile—which is odd, considering that the people behind this movie wanted to apparently create some awareness on the plight of the farmers. I guess their dislike of the great unwashed still manages to reek through these champagne activists’ faςade.
The horror elements are standard Lovecraft-ian clichés that have been done better and to greater effect elsewhere, and really, there is just not enough horror in here to make it worth the time of someone wanting to watch such a film.
Ultimately, this is a movie made by people that want to pat themselves in the back or make a quick paycheck, maybe both. It’s one of those movies designed to show off how great the people involved in it are. What’s in it for the viewer that paid money to watch this thing? Beats me. The time spent watching this thing is better off used on writing to local politicians calling for more green measures or something, as at least such action may just make a difference. Certainly more than watching this movie, at any rate.
