[Film Review] Unearth 2021

In an age of agricultural anxiety and an ever-pervasive fear of sickness, a slew of recent horrors such as Honeydew (dir. Devereux Milburn) and In The Earth (dir. Ben Wheatley) have explored the importance of healthy land and our direct dependence on a fertile, clean Earth for survival. In 2020, husband and wife director team Dorota Swies and John C Lyon released Unearth, an ominous eco-horror with hints of the Southern Gothic found in its decaying landscape.

In the dusty town of Silverthorn, PA live two families - the Dolans and the Lomacks - struggling with a failing farm and bust business respectively and feeling the pressure to leave behind a lifestyle that has no place in the modern world. The pair of troubled households receive a visit from a natural gas company, keen to tap the resources under the land. However unbeknownst to both families, beneath the earth, something stirs. Through a haze both literal and metaphysical, the families are dragged down by their roots into the depths of a Lovecraftian horror - one keen to remind us of humanity’s hopelessness against the forces of nature. Unearth takes time to carefully develop each of its characters - from their history to their coping mechanisms - which increases our sympathy for them in the face of a parasitic, eldritch entity looking for warm human hosts. Unearth’s body horror creeps on slowly, like the onset of a fever. The first half of the film is a dark, slow burn family drama with no hint of explicit horror beyond the very real threat of poverty. But when the fever breaks, Unearth fulminates into a messy mass of melting bodies, explosive vomit and violent self-destruction that would make John Carpenter proud, and characters meet their fate in suitably Cronenberg-esque displays of twisted vectors and fungal fleshy growths. 

Unlike other infamous parasitic horrors in film, the pathogen of Unearth is not the result of some extraterrestrial or spectral infection. Instead, the film takes a look at a biological threat much closer to home - one that is very much rooted in reality. Fracking and the potential for biological abomination go hand in hand, as the act has long been linked to health problems, from exposure to carcinogens to the contamination of groundwater (which is the cause of the devastating and horrifying mutations suffered by the Dolans and Lomacks). It’s no secret that due to the potential danger to humanity and the environment, fracking is a controversial topic, and one that the directors of Unearth clearly feel strongly about. But Unearth’s tendrilled message reaches further than simply disparaging the act of fracking, instead seeing it as a symptom of a larger disease - the rapacious, unforgiving grasp of greed. Viewers don’t exactly have to dig deep to assert that Unearth is an explicit comment on the dangers of late-stage capitalism, as Swies and Lyon have been open about their views in various interviews. When asked of Unearth’s themes, the two have been quoted as saying ‘Greed and ignorance have already destroyed our water supplies with chemicals, biological or radiological waste.’ and a viciously true soundbite that could’ve been Unearth’s tagline: ‘No one is safe from the wrecking ball that is corporate greed.’

Despite its stern environmentalist stance, Unearth refrains from pointing fingers at the families, and instead wisely explores the nuance behind the choices that corporate greed can drive us to. In a world where multi-billion-dollar corporations so often try to shift the blame onto the everyman, we can be quick to judge ourselves and each other for making choices that ensure our survival in the face of mass consumption. The decision to allow fracking is not one made easily by either family, and thus the blame of its eventual consequence is never placed on them. The matriarch of the Dolan family, Kathryn (another excellent performance from sci-fi royalty Adrienne Barbeau) responds with fierce anger to the notion of desecrating her farmland, while George Lomack (Marc Blucas) has no choice, as he has been pushed to the brink of financial ruin due to his daughter Kim’s impossibly high hospital bills. To add insult to injury is the reasoning behind Kim’s insurmountable debt – she’s a new mother. 

Allowing the fracking an act of desperation in the face of America’s most unforgiving industries. Even the natural gas company ironically named ‘Patriot’ is a sick subversive comment on how the American dream can leave its most vulnerable behind to rot.

As horror lurks under the farmland, the ominous breath of COVID19 lurks just under the surface of Unearth’s narrative. In a world where we are all too familiar with the paths of viral transmission, the paranoia-inducing shots of infected water entering the family’s bodies in a number of natural ways are enough to make you wince and reach for the hand sanitizer. 

With a comparably short 90 minute runtime, it was certainly a brave choice of the directors to delay unleashing its hellish imagery until just over an hour into the film - and one might argue that Unearth falters in its pacing. Those hoping for a rip roaring rampage of guts and gore would be better off looking elsewhere. But for those looking for an excavation into somber unease, look no further than Unearth.

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