In The Earth

Ben Wheatley's return to the genre that made his name after 8 years feels very much like a film that would only really work in 2021. Set during a pandemic, fear of the unknown, fear of what comes next, fear of everyone. Here he takes our worries from the past 15 months, throws in a large dash of folk horror, a soupçon of nausea inducing imagery and a whiff of bodily trauma and reminds us of why we all took notice of him in the first place. 

In a lush and verdant forest an unknown hand places a sharpened stone into the earth pointing up. Why? Who knows. Maybe we'll find out later. On the outskirts of the same woodlands Martin (Joel Fry) arrives to a research station. He's sprayed down, checked out and once proved to be disease free heads off into the wild in search of a work colleague Dr Wendell (Hayley Squires) who's gone missing while working amongst the trees. His guide is Alma (Ellora Torchia), a talkative and friendly counterpoint to his moody standoffishness. Along the way he learns from her the lore of the forest, the reasons why it's fertile landscape attracts visiting researchers. As they sleep under a canopy of trees they're attacked, their shoes are taken and phones are smashed. That sharpened stone comes into play, and an already tough trek becomes a painful nightmare until the pair encounter Zach (Reese Shearsmith), a man living in the woods who's also been attacked.

In The Earth is an unsettling watch, full of ambiguity and injury. You'll cringe, be lost, cover your eyes, be wary of everyone and what's coming around the bend. You'd assume after the last year of madness we've all dealt with this film would be a piece of cake but nope, Wheatley's taken the things we've stressed constantly about and weaponises them against us. Will enforced isolation and lack of human contact damage us? Will our social skills be intact when things go back to normal? Will normality ever return? Ask Shearsmith's Zach. Or, no, don't, walk away very slowly and don't look back. He's been creating these seemingly normal but mad around the edges characters for nearly 20 years now on TV and in film and this latest one will stick with you. Especially when you realise ...... nope, that's a spoiler.

In interviews Wheatley's always been an unashamed fan of folk horror, that particularly British genre that lurked around at the start of the 1970's which took it's inspiration from the folklore and supernatural stories embedded in the rural way of life. He's never gone full blown with it in the way The Wicker Man or Blood On Satan's Claw did, instead dabbling in its fringes with A Field In England and Kill List and here he does the same, using it to add his unique flavour to a topical story. It's not entirely successful and does at times feel like its being used to help along a tale that's not quite sure of it's direction but it's a good excuse to bombard us with the type of disorientating imagery that worms its way into your sleep. 

It won't be a film for everyone because Wheatley's never been one for spoonfeeding his audience or giving them easy answers. Some will find this painfully pretentious and rage at the ending, others will find it an absorbing parable about the unpredictable and unnerving path modern life has veered onto, a few may even nope out early on when a very vulnerable body part is painfully shredded but they'll miss out on a strangely compelling watch.

In The Earth is streaming online now. Its worth your while.