How to catch a Monster - Die Monster-Jäger

Adam Green, the upstart horror fan boy filmmaker behind Frozen and the Hatchet movies, directs this mockumentary about his love of monsters and how it leads to a strange old man called Decker (Ray Wise of Twin Peaks and Jeepers Creepers 2). Green plays himself as himself, not as a cartoonish parody as he did on his now defunct TV series Holliston. And we follow Green and his trusty cameraman as they record Decker's ramblings about the secret, subterranean society of monsters that lives beneath our world. Decker (a name presumably referencing David Cronenberg's legendary monster hunter from Clive Barker's Nightbreed) even claims to have found an entrance to this other world, a hole in the ground near a cemetery which he calls the Marrow.

Digging Up the Marrow is a fast paced, entertaining little movie that functions as a sort of subversion of the done to death found footage sub genre. But that also brings me to my main problem with the movie. I just am not sure what Adam Green intended to do here.

By playing himself, and having several other notable genre names cameo as themselves, people like Kane Hodder and Tom Holland, it seems that he wants to blur the lines between fact and fiction. However, by casting recognizable character actor Ray Wise as the fictional character at the center of all this, he completely ruins the illusion making it obvious from the start that this is wholly a work of fiction. So why make the movie in this fashion? I honestly have no idea.

But, I did enjoy watching the movie and Green does manage to prove at least two things here. The first is that he actually can "act" although he is playing himself, he plays himself as a likable, slightly awkward dreamer whose desperation to believe leads him down a rabbit hole into increasingly dangerous situations. The second is his wholehearted and rather admirable dedication to practical special effects. There is no cheesy CG here and what you see is obviously tangible and quite well designed to boot. Digging in the Marrow may feel a tad disposable, more like a time killing side project than a true feature, but it's still more entertaining and engaging than a lot of low budget crap out there. So check it out and have a good time.

good movie, even if it is a total ripoff from Clive Barkers Nightbreed, right down to some of the characters and names, Decker. With that said i did really enjoy the movie and hope he makes a follow up. Especially with the found film/first person camera horror has been so overdone ove the last 15 years or so. I've watched his other movies and was pretty disappointed overall, they are watchable but pretty unrealistic and again most of his characters and plots are blatantly stolen from other works and B lister both in acting and plot. But if you like the cheesy horror genre they are worth watching. It would be really great to see if he can come up with something completely original in the future.

A documentary exploring genre based monster art takes an odd turn when the filmmakers are contacted by a man (Ray Wise) who claims he can prove that monsters are indeed real.

At first, the concept of a monster documentary is good and the first few minutes are really enjoyable. The footage of asking convention guests about monsters seems genuine, and it could have been a story worth pursuing if a narrative could be built around the interviews.

But once we shift, it becomes obvious that casting Ray Wise is the biggest mistake. Rue Morgue said it (and then let it slide). Aaron Christensen came down hard on Adam Green for this. I am somewhere between the two. I think the concept is really clever, and my admiration for Green lets me be a bit more open-minded. But there really is no getting around it: Wise, who is incredible in this role, simply cannot be anyone other than Ray Wise in a "documentary".

We also learn that Mick Garris is a terrible actor. That should probably come as no surprise, but it is amusing to see that Garris cannot even play Mick Garris for less than five minutes without goofing it up.

a documentary-style found footage film by the writer/director of Holliston and the Hatchet slasher series. i'd heard good things about the monster design and make-up, but wasn't very impressed. the monsters get only a few seconds a piece of shaky-camera screen time and are actually pretty cartoonishly goofy-looking if you pause on them

the movie suffers a bit from the shaky camera syndrome typical of its genre — there's a point where the crew is sitting in the woods at night, waiting for a monster to appear, and when one of them points to a shape moving through the trees, the camera guy focuses literally everywhere but where the character is pointing. i can only imagine it was done on purpose to parody the genre style, and the actors were laughing about it behind the scenes

the story is imaginative and compelling, and Ray Wise, as detective William Dekker who invites director Adam Green to witness and record proof of the existence of monsters, is a great actor and storyteller. my favourite scenes are the ones where Adam and the film crew are just sitting in Dekker's house, recording his stories of past encounters with and illustrations of monsters from a subterranean metropolis he calls The Marrow

i like the film despite it's flaws and wouldn't mind a sequel picking up exploration, where this one ends rather abruptly, of The Marrow and its inhabitants. recommended for fans of found footage monster movies

The attempt to look like a real documentation got me for about time, until an actor appears, that is presented as a former police officer. I must admit, that the style got me for a few minutes. But it wasn't completely bad from that point. I liked how the story developed. It's a sake that this story doesn't fill 1 and half an hour. It's kept short and that makes it more taut. After all it is not the worst idea horror movie makers had over the decades.