Digging Up the Marrow

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.

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...

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.

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.

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