Unearth

If you want to waste 90 minutes of your life, you are in luck with Unearth. The first hour of the film is boring family bickering... the last 30 minutes is hardly much better however.

Trust me, there's infinitely better uses of your time. Plodding, with "dread" music playing from start to end. It's amateurish to play "dread" music before there's the slightest clue WHAT to fear! Too bad the rest of the movie wasn't up to the acting level, which was quite good. You know the editor(s) needed to wield the scissors when you can fast forward without fear of missing anything ANYTHING.

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Awesome premise, and a good start. Adrienne Barbeau kicks ass, and the acting is good all around. But then comes the angst, and solitary angst, and then the group angst and unresolved grief and personal opportunism. Then just more and more disjointed suffering and trauma that no one is doing anything about while no questions are being asked about anything. After the first half, it just become a 45 minute 'trailer' of nonsensical grief and greed scenes that make very little sense to anyone who can reason and who has the most basic of common sense. Nothing is ever explained. In all honesty, I would barely call this a "movie". It seemed it was going to be a nice, tight little drama, but no such luck. With 2 writers and 2 directors, SOMEBODY screwed this little pooch sideways in the second half. I think the actors deserve an apology...

Boring. I forced myself to watch to the halfway point but couldn't make it any further. Literally nothing happens for an hour. This movie would be good background noise if you're trying to fall asleep.

I didn't know what I was getting myself into here when I sat down to watch the 2020 horror drama movie "Unearth". In fact, I hadn't even heard about the movie prior to sitting down in 2021 to watch it. But it being a horror movie was more than sufficient to make me want to watch it. Plus the fact that it was a movie that I hadn't already seen before, and also it having an interesting cover, definitely helped seal the deal.

And it should be said that the storyline told in "Unearth", as written by writers Kelsey Goldberg and John C. Lyons is rather slow paced. Now, the storyline itself definitely was interesting enough, but the pacing of the movie just restrained the movie to reach its full potential. And you have to keep focused on the movie, because this is a very confusing storyline. Directors John C. Lyons and Dorota Swies definitely do good jobs at keeping the audience in the dark, and never really knowing what is actually going on and what is just imaginary.

That kind of storyline and approach to a movie doesn't really sit well with everyone in the audience, so "Unearth" could be somewhat of an acquired taste. I enjoyed it well enough, but I feel that the movie could have been a lot more entertaining if it had been properly paced, and also if there was actually a clear and distinct way of knowing what was actually going on.

I sat through the entire movie, and as it ended I was left with a sense of 'okay, what was that all about?', it makes for a somewhat anti-climatic movie and I feel somewhat bereft out of a proper movie experience.

It should be said, though, that the atmosphere in the movie was spot on. I definitely enjoyed that, and there were some elements of a Lovecraftian-inspired sense of cosmic dread to the movie.

The movie had a fairly strong ensemble of actors and actresses to portray the various roles and characters throughout the course of the movie. And they definitely put on good performances. It was just a shame that they weren't allowed to go to the full scope of what could be done, given the limitations of a slow paced story and a very confusing storyline.

"Unearth" wasn't an impressive horror movie, but it definitely was a good atmospheric movie - if there is such a thing.

My rating of the 2020 movie "Unearth" lands on a four out of ten stars. A shame really that this movie wasn't allowed to become more than it turned out to be, because it had all the contents necessary to make for a truly great atmospheric horror movie. If you are in for an evening of proper horror, then your money is not well spent on "Unearth".