Digging Up the Marrow

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

This was honestly a very different type of film. I am not very conversant with Adam Green's films (I surely PLAN to become that way though...) so I didn't really know what to expect.

Since I usually look at movies from the standpoint of 'film making', I think that I can see what he was trying to do with this one. A very unusual approach indeed... I think what I liked about it (other than the bloody FANTASTIC Ray Wise, of course) is the change in tone as you watch it. At the beginning it actually is quite funny and as the 'Trivia' section mentions, the entire film was very carefully scripted, although it does NOT come across that way at all. So, with that in mind, I really appreciated the genuine and natural humour that he drew out of the movie, especially with many of his own reactions to what was being said by others. He is really funny. But, I liked that as you became more engrossed in the story and began to see Adam's interest in the reality of the stories he was being told have an effect on him, I really liked the change in tone as things got more serious. I very much liked that and thought that they did an excellent job in switching gears, as it were...

Whether you suspend disbelief enough to become invested in the story or not, I truly found the film in it's entirety to be very entertaining. A LOT of the entertainment value come from Adam's own life and real friends and family being portrayed and his excellent interaction with them when talking about this 'Project'. Most of the rest of the entertainment value comes directly from the always awesome Ray Wise. He was frigg'n GREAT the whole way, in my lowly and wretched opinion. His VERY subtle turns at absolute DEADPAN humour were totally hilarious! And Adam's reaction to them was just as great. As far as the actual story being told and the 'Documentary' approach, sure, if you have an active imagination like I do, you can get caught up in that too...

I think that people who automatically dismiss the film because Ray Wise, a very well known actor, is in it, are missing the point of the movie. As mentioned in the 'Trivia' section here, they REALLY agonized on whether to use someone well known as the main guy or not. But, after giving it a lot of thought and getting audience's reactions, they realized that to approach the movie as a fully genuine 'True' story and then LATER likely disappoint the audience or make them feel 'fooled' was something that they did not want to do, as some other 'Mockumentaries' have fallen victim to. So, this way, the audience KNOWS right from the start that it is fiction, but at the same time by cleverly using Adam and his family and friends as REAL people along with their choice of Ray Wise, they came up with a very unique and interesting balance for this kind of movie.

So, this is quite honestly an EXTREMELY difficult film to recommend to people in general. As you can see from the many varied reviews here, that the reactions are truly all OVER the place. I personally think that if you are a film maker yourself, OR if you look at films from a film maker or director's perspective, OR if you have a real love and affection for the Horror Genre itself, THEN you will have a much greater chance at really enjoying this unique and entertaining film.

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.

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.

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.