Shallow ground - Misteri sepolti

Saw the flick in Montreal and overall loved it. The plot keeps giving you tidbits and lets your imagination go to lots of places, then adds another twist.

The quality of the shooting is amazing for a microbudget flick and it is well rounded (good score, etc.).

The pure horror makes for a great summer flick. Sure there is the odd cheesy horror moment of guy stuffing boxes in his truck for ten minutes waiting for the horror to happen, but not many of us are going to this to be fully intellectually stimulated.

Overall, great story, great effects, good production, definitely worth some summer or halloween fun!

A blood-covered, naked teenage boy walks into a small town sheriff's office. The two deputies on duty think they've got a maniac on their hands. Unfortunately, it's not that simple.

SHALLOW GROUND is a twisted tale of supernatural revenge. There's a serial killer on the prowl, but this is a relatively minor problem.

A huge dam is being constructed, forcing the town into near extinction. Most residents have already left. The remaining skeleton crew find themselves caught up in a battle between the guilty living and the vengeful dead.

This is a low-budget (well under $100k) film that makes good use of its funds. The effects are wickedly well done, and the acting is believable. The wonderful Patty McCormack plays a central role in this flesh-crawler. The "family dinner" scene toward the end is unforgettable.

Recommended for lovers of the disturbing and macabre...

While preparing to shutdown a sheriff's station in the woods, the deputies Stuart Dempsey (Stan Kirsch) and Laura Russell (Lindsey Stoddart) are surprised by a naked teenager covered in blood and with a hunt knife in his hand. The boy is arrested and Sheriff Jack Sheppard (Timothy V. Murphy) is summoned by his assistant. While investigating the identity of the boy, Jack hopes to solve the disappearance of many people in the area, including his girlfriend. When the identity of the boy is disclosed, the mystery increases.

The beginning of "Shallow Ground" is promising and intriguing, and I recalled the "X-Files" series. Unfortunately, in a certain moment, it seems that director and writer Sheldon Wilson lost the control of his creation and the story goes nowhere, becoming very confused and having an unsatisfactory and disappointing resolution. In the end, there are three plots: the lead one, about the old lady that lost her husband and daughter in the dam, blames everybody and "builds" a new family of her own: the secondary one is about the torment sheriff , that suffers for not having saved the blond girl. The third one is about a drug dealer that was executed in the city. For some unexplained reason, the dead seek revenge, and all the people killed in the woods somehow combines in one gore being. The same happens with the drug dealer. But why so much complication, wouldn't it be easier if the boy had gone directly to the killer's house and stop her crimes the same way the dealer did with the officer that shot him? The last scene is simply an awful hook for a possible sequel. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Terra Rasa" ("Shallow Ground")

A deeply flawed plot. I won't recapitulate them here, since many previous commenters have done this quite well. And I did not like the clichéd device of the music building to a (supposed) climax, but then nothing happening in the film. An interesting device the first time it was tried, but filmmakers need to leave that alone. The acting was uneven as well. But it did, surprisingly enough, hold my interest.So it isn't a complete failure. I liked Natalie Avital, and hope she gets more good roles in the future. (Okay I really mean better roles.) The same for Lindsey Stoddart. I suppose that horror film fans should see this movie, and that others should give it a pass.

Picked this one up at the library, thus thankfully saving myself any expense, mostly because of the deceptive blurbs on the DVD case: "Refreshing and ambitious," (thoroughly wrong on the first count, debatable on the second) "Easily one of the most original horror films of the last year," (possibly, if you've never seen another horror film that year, or have extremely low standards) "Winner Best Picture, Dead by Dawn Film Festival 2004" (not a terribly glowing recommendation to attend any future DbD festivals, I can assure you), and several others that were mercifully covered with library stickers.

Others have already sufficiently commented on the weaknesses of this low-budget effort, including the choppy editing, the meandering, slapdash plot in hopeless search of focus (and intelligence), the forgettable acting, the serviceable but otherwise unremarkable camera-work, the competent but undistinguished score, and the effective but pointless gore effects.

Who greenlights crap like this? Who is dumb enough to put up the money for a project that only serves to prove Sturgeon's Law? Do no-name actors actually swell with pride at having a joke like this on their resumes? One can only scratch one's head and wonder.

Safe to say, a wreck like this makes films like "High Tension" or "Saw I/II" or even "Hostel" look like Oscar contenders.

Invest your time in this one only if you are really, really desperate for entertainment. Whatever promise its creators have or had was completely squandered on this turkey.

I had an epiphany after first submitting this comment, noticing as I did that one of the supporting actors is thanked in the credits, a guy who just happens to run an acting school. No doubt the school was in the vicinity of this film's shooting locations. No doubt the school provided a number of warm bodies for various roles. No doubt the school was counting on an influx of students and their cash via this movie. No doubt this school has failed to produce any recognizable talent since its inception, which is a shame, since it appears that the actor running this school works steadily, if only in television (and I say that facetiously, knowing that teeveeland offers far more and steadier work than film could ever hope to do). Which, if nothing else, once again goes to prove the truth of Sturgeon's Law.