Digging Up the Marrow

This is a film I have been wanting to see for a while now. I hadn't even seen a trailer, just read the story line and it sounded amazing. When I finally found it, I was excited and even watched the trailer just to make sure it was going to be worth watching. The trailer was awesome and I was ready to dive right in.

Unfortunately, everything in the trailer is pretty much all the great moments in this movie.

With such an awesome story idea I was greatly disappointed that the deliver wasn't as good. In fact, the film relied to heavy on plot and story line that I think it forgot it was a horror film. In fact the music used in the movie was cheesy and reminded me of a romantic comedy score.

The biggest problem with this film is the Director/Writer Adam Green, not that he didn't write or direct a good film, it was that he starred in it and was the most obnoxious character I have seen on film in the past ten years (and that includes ALL of Will Farrell's films in the last ten years).

I really felt that Adam Green had such a great idea, something unique even though the story line itself is not all that original, but the idea was wasted. Throughout the whole film I kept thinking that this was nothing more than a huge advertisement for his other films, especially his TV show on FearNet which was said about a thousand times in this film.

I won't say it's a complete waste of time, in fact when the scary moments happen, and they are far and few in between, it was interesting and fun to watch. The rest of it however, was annoying and boring. Such a wasted opportunity.

I would like to a sequel, something that would follow the horror aspect of the story line a lot more. There is just so much more this film could have given us and instead wasted the whole time promoting his other movies. The ending left me wanting more and not in a good way.

TL;DR: 3/4 self promotion of director Adam Green and his other works. 1/4 lazy adaptation of Clive Barker's "Nightbreed"

This was a mess. The only saving grace of this movie is the amazing artwork/ creature design of the incredibly talented Alex Pardee. Oh and Ray Wise was pretty great. Unfortunately, that wasn't enough to make the film enjoyable.

There is literally a montage of Green signing autographs... The beginning of the film is supposed to be meaningful. He gets lots of horror celebs to give a short testimonial about their love of the horror genre. But it is really just a montage of Green showing off his connections. This movie screams "Oh look at me! Aren't I cool? I have tons of fans and know lots of famous people."

Half the movie is just Adam and friends wearing t-shirts from his movies surrounded by posters of his movies with a computer screensaver of his movies... Absolutely shameless. There are so many inconsistencies in tone because Green can't stick to the narrative and just has to keep shamelessly showing off and self-promoting.

If he wanted to make an effective mockumentary, he should've cast other actors and left himself out of the spotlight. But he just couldn't help himself. This is a vanity project wearing the guise of a horror film.

Adam Green has always seemed like a hack to me. This film further solidifies that feeling. He comes across as a self-important egomaniac. In interviews he always defends the plot holes and lazy filmmaking decisions of his movies with circular reasoning and 4th wall tapping. Dude, just because you make a self-deprecating joke about portions of your movie or personality, does NOT give you an excuse to keep using lazy scripts and have a sloppy attention to detail.

What a waste of Ray Wise and Alex Pardee...

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.

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.

This is a horror flick, taking the road of a fake documentary (mockumentary) that's all about the plot.

The whole thought put into making the overall Marrow structure kinda amazed me. While watching, even though you're not thrilled or anything, you're deep curious to know what's going to be the outcome of all that.

Acting is regular, nothing special. Also, I liked that they went down the practical effects road. Even though it's pretty obvious that the effects are cheap, I like that feeling you get while seeing someone in rubber costumes and go full "aaah, practical effects all the way"! (It's way better than seeing bad CGI).

There're some jump scares here and there, but that's about it; it's all about the story indeed.