As a big-time mark for weird fiction writer H.P. Lovecraft, I have been patiently awaiting a truly masterful cinematic exercise in Lovecraftian horror for decades. It’s not that there haven’t been good films – even great ones – that touch on Lovecraft’s particular brand of cosmic horror (John Carpenter’s 1982 classic The Thing, and more recently 2018’s Annihilation come to mind – not to mention last year’s Color Out of Space, a direct adaptation of a Lovecraft short story), but truly capturing what makes the long-dead author so influential to genre stalwarts is something that still manages to evade filmmakers. This isn’t something that upsets me (I am fully aware of the difficulties involved with translating Lovecraft’s adjectival prose and bleak themes to other mediums), but it is something I notice whenever a film makes the attempt. Sadly, my wait for a Lovecraftian masterpiece continues, but Ben Wheatley’s In the Earth takes a noble stab at filling the void.
Closely following Lovecraftian storytelling formulas and tropes, In the Earth combines elements of folk horror and science fiction into just the kind of insanity and paranoia-infused psychedelic freak-out that I enjoy. Genre fans – especially those who have ever played the Call of Cthulhu tabletop role-playing game – are sure to pick up on these purposeful similarities (cutting edge science, ancient tomes, sanity losses, etc.), but Wheatley is careful not to put all his eggs into one Lovecraftain basket. Hidden in plain sight throughout the narrative are clever allusions to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, as well as unmistakable nods to COVID-induced isolation burn-out. While this last piece may be the film’s least successful or explored thematic element, it certainly proves a crafty way to include COVID safety precautions (like mask-wearing) into a horror movie that was shot completely during lockdown.
To harness the film’s folk horror elements, Wheatley leans heavily on the cinematography of Nick Gillespie, whose shaky-cam style, while tiresome at times, successfully conveys the chaos of the circumstances. With cinematic nods to 1999’s The Blair Witch Project and the “found footage” genre that film helped kickstart, Gillespie’s camera follows Martin and Alma (Joel Fry and Ellora Torchia) as they venture deep into the forest to resupply a scientist (Hayley Squires) who is searching for a cure to a deadly virus that has ravaged the population. True to genre form, once isolated, strange things begin happening to the pair, but not in the ways one might expect. What’s great about In the Earth lies in just how unexpectedly things unfold. You may guess at the motives of characters like Reece Shearsmith’s Zach – and you may even guess partially right – but I promise you won’t see everything coming. In the Earth is too weird for that – and I mean that in the best way possible.
The downside to this approach is that In the Earth tends to drag out its middle section a bit too long and put too much importance on things that don’t amount to much in the end. In addition, these overextended welcomes open opportunities for out-of-place pulp wackiness that threaten to derail the whole show. That they don’t is a testament to Wheatley’s ability to wisely pull back the reins, but, strangely, also somewhat of a betrayal to Lovecraft. I find myself in the awkward position of being torn between wanting to see the whole affair devolve into the kind of madness Lovecraft was fond of ending his stories with, and the more measured, earthy psychedelia Wheatley ultimately settles on. In either case, In the Earth proves a noteworthy entry in the pantheon of Lovecraftian cinema while still displaying enough cult film sensibility to appeal to a wide base of horror fans outside that specific subgenre.
James is a writer, skateboarder, record collector, wrestling nerd, and tabletop gamer living with his family in Asheville, North Carolina. He is a member of the Southeastern Film Critics Association, the North Carolina Film Critics Association, and contributes to The Daily Orca, Razorcake Magazine, Mountain Xpress, and Asheville Movies.