Unearthed

I went into this film despite the bad press it was getting because I liked Deada nd Breakfast and I like Emmanuel Vaugier and I'm a big fan of horror flicks and horror fest in general. But this film felt so amateur poorly written, filmed, acted, constructed. The film is confusing and pretty plot less and features some of the worst CGI I've ever seen it looks like the cgi beasties of the castlevania Nintendo game. I usually am open to pretty much everything. But you have to drawn the line somewhere and this film if you can call it that is far past it.Do yourself a favor and miss this so the once promising director could try and make up for this attrocity.

I thought this movie would be the best film of the new Afterdark releases, however, upon watching it I am hoping that is not the case. It had promise and for a second there I thought it would be good, but it just has way to many flaws. I will get to them later, but first the plot. Something is unearthed in a cave and goes on the rampage, a sheriff with a past is on the case. A truck isolates the town leaving four strangers in town stranded, monster begins rampage. An Indian girl and this other guy seem to know a way to stop it and there is some cat and mouse as the survivors and their decreasing numbers hide here and there. So what are its flaws? First, the whole sheriff with a past thing. It is a female sheriff and she had an incident that was so troubling to her that she has been drinking and having problems for a year. A plot straight out of a lifetime channel movie plot. Do not get me wrong and I am not disparaging the channel, but those types of plot points do not belong in horror movie of this type. Also, when it is revealed what she did you will wonder how the heck she has stayed sheriff for a year. It did seem to be because of incompetence on her part and I don't see how anyone could have let her be sheriff after that. She is also way to pretty for someone who has been drinking for a year and living under the sun. Most would have developed wrinkles and would have aged considerably, however she is still quite modelesque. Then there are the four strangers in town, never before has there been four more pointless and underdeveloped characters to enter a movie. You know not their motivations, or anything. The girl bit by the rattler, her friend, the city dude, and the broken down hitchhiker. Heck, you learn more about the trucker whose rig crashes five minutes into the movie than you do any of the four strangers. However, all is not bad as there are a couple of good kills...the dude in the car at the end and the girl in the café. The one rancher is actually a good character, to bad he is not in the movie much and the monster is okay too, although it is just a cheap version of the alien and its origin is a bit far fetched.

In the desert area of Hat Creek, cows are found partially devoured and the farmers believe that a wolf is attacking the cattle. The alcoholic Sheriff Annie Flynn (Emmanuelle Vaugier) is called by the local farmer Rob Horn (M.C. Gainey) to witness the remains of an animal to request reimbursement from the government and for an accident with a tank truck that is blocking the road. However, Annie sooner discovers that an ancient alien creature sent to annihilate life on Earth hundreds of years ago was released by the Indian Kale (Luke Goss) during an archaeological excavation in the desert. The Indian Caya (Beau Garrett) and a group of travelers stranded in the spot without gas together with Annie and Kale try to find a means to destroy the alien and save mankind.

Watching "Unearthed" is a waste of time, since the forgettable story is nothing but a collection of clichés. Most of the characters are unpleasant and non-charismatic and the lead character is actually the anti-heroine Annie Flynn that is a drunken sheriff tormented by the accidental death of an Indian girl. The scene of Caya and the alien creature is another ridiculous rip-off of the classic scene of "Alien" with Sigourney Weaver. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): "Aniquilação" ("Annihilation")

1. Some people can't watch "shaky camera" scenes. It makes us sick. In this case there was no reason for it. If you want people to not be able to watch your movie, why even make it? Shaking the camera is not a substitute for special effects

2. Painfully loud is not scary. It's not dramatic. When the conversation scenes and the action scenes differ by 100 decibels, it's just painful and unpleasant.

When I have to spend the entire movie making drastic changes to the volume, I'm not being entertained.

In fact I've seen far worse ..... Worse story, worse dialogue, worse acting. I have to say the creature cgi was pretty bad, again not quite as bad as some others I've seen. Fortunately, or perhaps cleverly, they kept the number of scenes where the creature was fully visible to a minimum. The shots that gave us close ups the creatures head, claws etc were done with physical structures and were actually pretty good, better than expected.

This movie had enough story to keep me interested, flowed well enough to be watchable, and as a bonus the ending was not what I thought it would be. It was good enough that I thought I'd add my 2 cents review wise.

I don't regret watching this movie, although I'll probably never watch it again.