Digging Up the Marrow

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...

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.

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 would probably better off making Hatcher 4 or actual documentary of his work. Digging Up The Marrow is an average found footage film with reliance of authenticity as film makers find an odd conspiracy theory. It gets a bit too meta with inside joke and backstage production, but there isn't much excitement since more than half of the content is simple bantering. What few scares it has are only half effective and numbingly too late.

Plot involves a real production house, they are called by a strange old man claiming that he has seen another world filled with monsters. Adam Green and his colleagues investigate this story with generous amount of interviews and vague camera shots. Since it's a mockumentary, genuine reaction might contribute more, but as the story progresses the yelling and debating become stale incredibly fast. Script is more true to life, yet it's often too sporadic to form any suspense.

The better part of the film is behind-the-scene features. It's nice to see more of the assembly parts of filmmaking, be that artistic design, editing process or a few nit bits from comic-con. Whereas the horror plot isn't that appealing or convincing in any way. Unfortunately, there is hefty amount of the playtime that's allocated for this horror tale which lacks real tension. There are a couple of good moments, but even those are expected gimmick other found footage films have already done, and ironically the film itself is aware of this.

Camera work is not great, it predictably uses first person view or some manners of CCTV. The most agonizing part of this subgenre, shots in the dark and shaky cam are also presented here. Although some of the effects could build the atmosphere, but halfway point after hearing multiple banters the film becomes tedious.

If it's a complicated way to show passion for the work, there has to be better ways to convey that message. A montage of authentic production from old films would be more fascinating than pseudo horror like this.

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.