Soft for Digging

I really think I should make my case and have every(horror and or cult)movie-buff go and see this movie...

I did!

It-is-excellent: Very atmospheric and unsettling and scary...

Incridible how they could make such a gem of a film with the very low(read-"no"!)-budget they had....

Synopsis taken from website: "One morning, an old man wanders out into the woods in search of his runaway cat. He finds instead a child without parents and a murder with no corpse..."

On this website(IMDb) there is no trailer, but I will leave a link here to the site of the movie itself where there IS a trailer which is quite unsettling so please go and check it out...

www.softfordigging.com

Billed as a horror film and in the end proves to be so but for most of its running time this is a rather disconcerting film about an elderly gentleman who lives alone in the woods. He sees something disturbing whilst searching for his cat and then has his dreams disturbed by the imagery and tries to solve the mystery. The woods are bleak and shot with hand held camera giving creepy and atmospheric tone to proceedings. Proceedings are, however, a little slow and the pacing is not helped by chapter headings, every now and again. In a film without dialogue, of course, there is little option but to use headings, if only to give the audience some notion of where we are going. Not that anyone will guess though!

This film, that received an incognito release back in 2001, isn't actually as good as it's minor cult following would suggest. That's not to say that it isn't good, however; it's refreshing to see something a little different and although the film is flawed, it does succeed for that reason. The story follows a reclusive man that lives in the woods and witnesses a murder while searching for his cat. The film doesn't have any dialogue, and is told in chapters. This makes the film different from the outset as it leaves the audience with only their own thoughts as to what's going and nothing is ever really explained. Other films, such as the worst film ever made; The Blair Witch Project, have tried similar ways of developing a plot and most have failed. This one doesn't really succeed, but it's probably the best example I've seen yet.

The film is almost completely set in the woods, and there aren't many people other than our central character shown on screen. This gives the film an intense feeling of loneliness and isolation, which is always unsettling. The film also seems to have taken some influence from true cult classic 'The Evil Dead' in the way it is shot. The way that the camera moves through the woods is reminiscent of the 'Raimi-cam' that was introduced in said movie. In spite of having no dialogue, and moving relatively slowly; Soft for Digging never becomes boring and the scenes where we are allowed to brood with the main character are kept alive by what the audience thinks as we see him trying to continue with his life. The film features some very unnerving nightmare sequences, which are the movie's best moments and also come as something as a surprise in a movie of this nature. Nothing, however, can prepare you for the ending, which is as ambiguous as it is disgraceful and I almost guarantee that it will shock, repulse and surprise you.

There's not really enough of this film, and what there is isn't really good enough to call it 'good' without lying. However, this is an impressive first feature from director J.T. Petty and I look forward to seeing better things from him in the future.

A student film made at NYU for $6,000., SOFT FOR DIGGING is more intelligent, more creative and considerably scarier than any half-dozen recent Hollywood horror extravaganzas. Careful attention to camera angles, moody lighting and cold, bleak landscapes combine to tell a slow and quiet but thoroughly involving supernatural tale with an uncommonly real feel. There's almost no dialogue in the gloomy story of Virgil, an old man who lives alone in a cabin in the middle of the chilliest looking woods you've ever seen. Following his "very bad cat" into the colorless, deathly forest one day, the old man witnesses the murder of a child by a mysterious young man. Police searches for the little girl's body turn up nothing, but Virgil is haunted by nightmare visions that eventually lead him to the horrible secret of the brutal killing. In spite of the lack of dialogue (or maybe because of it), you'll feel like you're right there with the solemn old hermit, experiencing his growing fear and confusion during his lonely quest to make some sense of the crime. The cleverly paced film breaks up its long, quiet stretches with sudden bursts of hallucinatory visual shocks. The horror imagery is conveyed via techniques that you've seen fumbled embarrassingly in any number of big-budget horror movies, but SOFT FOR DIGGING director J. T. Petty knows how to use them to their most nightmarish effect. After several surprises, the story ends with a cruel, sick joke that manages to work perfectly with everything that's come before if you're willing to give it a little thought. An intelligent and well-crafted chiller that stands as a reminder of how much can be achieved, even on a next-to-nothing budget, when storytelling and mood are given prominence over special effects and bloodshed. Teenaged video game junkies with the attention span of goldfish might not have sufficient concentration skills to follow this one, but it comes heartily recommended to more mature viewers. It wasn't officially released until 2005.

The plot is straightforward an old man living off a main road in woodland one day witnesses a man murdering a child in the woods. Soft For Digging follows the old man's attempts to try and convince the police that what he saw was not a figment of his imagination. However, there is a problem each time the old man guides the police to where the murder happen no corpse can be found. Soft For Digging has a diminutive dialogue which reflects the majority of the scenes of the film, an old man living by himself in a house. During the film I found that I was scared twice namely when the murdered child abruptly appears before the old man. The rest of the film I have to admit did not engage me; I found the tempo of the film a little too slow. The limited dialogue was not a problem. However, the development of the story and its conclusions, after watching the film, took too long. I feel more could have been made of the relationship, ghostly encounters, with the child and the old man. Alone in the woods at night unsure of your own mind can lead to some eerie situations, children are always scary as ghosts, see Dark Water.