Digging Up the Marrow

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.