User reviews

Great idea for an opening - a naked teenage boy, covered in blood from head to foot, walks out of the forest holding a big butcher knife - and into the Sheriff's station which is packing up, making ready to leave.

Bad idea - a Sheriff with a heavy Irish brogue, corny dialogue, some truly 'WTF?!' editing, having all the 'good guys' in the film at least 5 minutes behind the audience (in a 'come on, it's obvious!' way), and a final shot that will have people leaving the cinema asking their friends "What on earth was that about?!" The director / DP knows how to do fish-eye shots, slo-mo, reverse-filming, all those bog-standard music-video things (and the lighting was fine) - even the SFX were fine - but the film really falls down on plot, script and editing. The plot, what it is, is revealed too slowly. I'm all for suspense, but not when you waste 45 minutes and leave only the last 45 or so to shoe-horn all the development in. Characters (and red-herrings) are suddenly forgotten / nobody reacts in a normal way / there's no real clue to events (and people) that are revealed later.. And - given the plot, which I'm trying not to reveal - there's way too little explanation of events which we're told are happening elsewhere (and would make what's going on more coherent).

As I say, the final shot - clearly designed to be a 'sting in the tail' (maybe even a hint at a sequel, or events continuing) will instead leave you walking out of the theatre trying to work out why?! / what?! / and, is there any way I can get my money back? (no).

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")

This strange horror offering has a blood-spattered teenage boy showing up at a police station. What happened to him, and how does this event tie in with the murder of a girl the previous year? This off-beat little horror film came out of the blue (for me at least), because prior to seeing it in my local video store, I'd never heard of it. I rented it, and let me say that while it's not the best horror flick I've seen lately, and it certainly does have it's fair share of problems, it's definitely a breath of fresh air from most of the crap released into cinema these days that people call "horror". Considering it's tiny budget, "Shallow Ground" pulls off some pretty impressive stuff. The film is shot on 16mm but looks great visually, I was shocked afterwords when I found out it WASN'T shot on 35mm. The actors were hit and miss but that's to be expected from a film of this caliber. Steve London's score is very good too, nicely dark and foreboding. One of the best aspects of the film though are the great make-up effects by Patrick Magee. There's lots of disgusting-looking corpses and blood, and the death of the Helen (Patricia McCormack) was great. There's almost no CGI used in this film (thank God) and horror fans will most certainly be pleased by the gruesome set pieces on display here.

Still, there's some stuff that didn't work so well too. The plot takes a long time to unfold and really isn't that interesting. The characters were mostly 1-D, and the ending, though cool, makes no sense whatsoever. This is an odd little horror film, certainly not bad but not *quite* great either. Still recommended, though, as it most certainly is unique and well-done.

7/10.

I could spend all night picking apart why this movie is so terrible. Unfortunately, it's not worth the effort. Let's just say the characters are one-dimensional, the story is confused and contorted beyond all imagining, and the dialog is inane. Added to this, when the story does finally begin to make some sense in the end, a brand new evil appears out of the woods, apparently unrelated to anything else in the movie, and destroys whatever cohesive thought the movie had.

I rented this movie based on the glowing reviews on the case. Note to self: Never rent a movie recommended by The Montreal Mirror or Horrorview.com. "Home Media Retailing" says it delivers an "intelligent, terrifying story." No, it doesn't. Saw II, for example, could never be accused of having an "intelligent" story - but it is about a hundred times as intelligent as this thing.

Practically every scene features something unbelievable. Not "Oh wow, that's so gross it's unbelievable!", but "nobody would ever say/do that, that's unbelievable!" And the movie doesn't seem to know whether its a supernatural thriller, a "dawn of the dead" movie or a murder mystery. Maybe it thinks it is some of each. In fact, it's just an amateurish stew of competing, dumb plot lines. The movie mostly doesn't make any sense, and when it does, it's predictable and silly.

Not be confused with Danny Boyle's A SHALLOW GRAVE, this low-budget horror flick centers around a series of murders in a small town. A sheriff's office is shutting down and preparing to relocate when a bloodied teen walks in the door. The revelation of his identity only makes things more confusing. It is hard to say more about this movie without giving it all away. Suffice it to say SHALLOW GROUND involves restless spirits and their thirst for revenge. The first half has some wonderfully unsettling and occasionally scary moments. The second half loses some momentum, although the killer's identity comes as a neat surprise and pays homage to Hitchcock in its own twisted way. The supernatural elements are kept to a minimum, which works in the movie's favor. Horror film fans will have seen the plot before, but may appreciate the clever way in which it is presented. The acting is hit or miss at best, and the movie is extremely bloody. It deals pretty graphically with torture-murders, so the little ones should be in bed before you watch this.

First off, let me say that the reason I gave this movie a 9 out of 10, is because I'm basing it off of my own personal horror flick scale. I almost always have to lower my standards a bit for horrors. So I rated it a 9 as a horror film.

Anyways -- At the start, I thought Shallow Ground was going to be another cheesy knock-off horror flick, and boy, was I wrong. It had its expected cheap scares, and some that were very original. I wouldn't quite call it scary, but more along the lines of really creepy. Given that the movie was on a low budget, they pulled out some great actors from the wood-works, I was very impressed. The story was, well.. unique, but not entirely -- yet it was very well written, and I have a hunch that the writer got exactly what he wanted (hopefully that all made sense). This movie will keep you interested as long as you have an open mind to latter day horror films. All-in-all, this was definitely one of the better horrors I've seen in a long time. It's just a shame I didn't know about it until a year after its release. It's worth a watch, trust me.

Oh yeah, and don't let your kids watch this one.

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!

I can't believe how many people on here gave this movie more than two stars. Granted, it's a B horror film, and this must be remembered when viewing these types of "films." However this one missed the mark. I bought this film on DVD (luckily pirated Chinese DVDs cost less than a dollar) and I still want my money back. It has the feel of a USA up all night with Gilbert Godfrey feeling to it that made me want to take a shower after viewing.

The acting is horrible, as is to be expected in this type of film, and the scripted dialogue does nothing to ease the pain. The cinematography is actually quite decent for such a low budget film, but the forced soundtrack distracts you from appreciating the shots.

And yes, why the F*(K is the Police Chief/Sheriff/whatever he is of this small, rural, inbred part of America speaking with an Irish accent for?

Disturbing.

It is true that there are many issues in Shallow Ground that hamper its performance as a masterpiece and keep it from reaching classic status. The acting, for example, was far from excellent, there are too many easily perceived goofs and the characters fail to make any impression other than that of their physical presence on set and even that can almost be disregarded, at times.

Yet, there is a very fortunate combination of factors that rise this movie above the average, uninspired product with little or no value. First of all, the scenery. Not only are the woods chosen a very strong visual setting in which to unroll a horror story as it was explored almost to the fullest. Instead of the typical dark-hued and mostly shady forest environment for which most of these movies would go for, Shallow Ground opts to shoot sun dappled clearings and light flooded groves. And this green preponderance is shockingly effective when it becomes the background for the blood soaked boy whose silent performance may very be one of the most uncanny characters ever to haunt a horror movie.

Which is another strong feature in this movie, perhaps the most original one, the nameless creation whose identity is a mystery and whose purpose is never fully explained. Although many will claim this is a fault in the script, that plot-wise it is a muddle of never fully developed ideas, in a way that is exactly its allure. A horror movie must leave something to the imagination, there is not need to skin down motives and expose a very well define system of motivations for it to work as a nightmarish concoction of the not necessarily logic.

Although it does remind one of an X Files Episode, the gruesome and very often blood spattered approach that permeates the whole movie set it a few rungs above the toned down horror of our days.

At least, Shallow Ground is not afraid to be a pure horror movie, one that accepts the rules of the genre only to introduce fresh variations within a tradition that seemed to be dying off. Shallow Ground may the first movie of the 2000's to follow the Texas Chainsaw legacy.

And that is praise worthy.

I guess no one really expects horror flicks to make complete sense.This "film" leaves any sense behind in the first 5 minutes. There are enough holes in story to drive a fleet of semi-trucks thru.

Although there is some originality, the script writer tries to be too clever for anyone's good. There are so many "sub plots" the main storyline loses any coherence\continuity it becomes too much work to care about main characters\story.

For those wanting to know what this is about. done wrong \ revenge \ get to it already will ya

I could have found a better way to waste an hour or two.

It's always nice to be pleasantly surprised by an indie, low-budget horror flick, and this is one that fits the bill. Shallow Ground is unique in it's premise, but actually falls into some classic genre staples, like sound induced scares, and people being stalked in the woods. But what's nice about this film, is that it looks, and more importantly, FEELS like something you haven't quite seen yet, and that is this movies biggest asset. The film starts out eerily enough, with a blood covered boy entering a soon to be abandoned police station in the middle of BFE, if you catch my drift. Things begin to take shape after that, and we get an actual mystery involving some disappearances of some local yokels from a year ago. That's as far as I'll go on the plot, other than to say it keeps you thinking, and you're never quite sure where it's going until the climax. That's the good, along with some very good editing, a very disorienting soundtrack (it works), and some actual acting abilities on display. There isn't much bad to say about this film, other than the strange addition of Ray, who I think was the deputy's dad (she calls him Ray), who seems to know more than anyone else, although how or why he does is never explained. A little back-story on him would have helped. All in all, I can't count how many times I have been duped by a DVD cover, proclaiming movies to be the next generation in horror movies. This time, the accolades are justified. The director has obvious skills (catch the making of documentary) and imagination, along with a creative vibe to bring something original to the table, w/out copping out to being yet another 70's homage film. Yes, the influences are there, but they take a back seat to a fresh approach to a genre that is being over-run with the same things over and over again. This one's worth a view. 7 out of 10 stars.

Budget horror defies its shoestring funds and provides a cracking yarn for 90 minutes.

Shallow Ground is the type of movie you can't really reveal too much about in terms of its plot, as otherwise you'll spoil the vast majority of its content.

Nevertheless, a simple synopsis is that a small town police station which is about close up for good is thrown into disarray on the day most of its employees are leaving when a young man entirely drenched in blood shows up. Entirely disturbed by this, the officers realise they have to investigate what's going on, and when a blood test reveals the blood's origins the police realise they have a real mystery on their hands.

Saying more is pointless, so I won't. To say the least this movie was an absolute surprise. Granted it came across as a glorified episode of the X-FIles and like-minded TV sci-fi dramas, but this didn't really matter. A movie has to entertain, and given how this one opens and develops, believe it or not, it's quite fascinating and *gasp* original.

Certainly there are moments which require suspension of disbelief, but hey, it's a movie, and it's fiction.

The direction is pretty decent, even if there are areas which could have benefited from faster, more thrusting direction - the pacey plot really needed regular breakneck pace and it slowed down in the odd place which wasn't the wisest move.

The acting is acceptable enough, but who watches horror for the acting...

The gore levels are rather high - the movie is not especially gory, but it has a high volume of the visceral stuff to say the least.

The strongest aspect is definitely the plot, and the special effects add a lot to it too.

Fairly recommended.

For the first half hour of this film, at least, I was prepared to give it a 10. Sheldon Wilson definitely knows how to direct in general, and more importantly, how to direct creepy, mysterious, atmospheric and visceral horror scenes. That this film was shot for reportedly under 100 thousand dollars is incredible, and shows that the vast majority of films currently made have no reason to have a much bigger budget than that. I can't wait to see more from Wilson. Unfortunately, his writing needs a little work, as that's what eventually brought this one down a few points as it went on.

The beginning, the excellent part, proceeds like a nightmare. Little is explained, and we get surrealistic jumps from one course of action to another. A bizarre "villain" appears from almost the first frame, and Wilson was smart and imaginative enough to create a new kind of horror monster that's both extremely intriguing and unpredictable. While a backwoods town's police department--it consists of three people--tries to figure out and deal with this unusual character, Wilson, his cast and crew also treats us to beautifully acted, designed, shot and edited work that heightens the nightmare-like tension.

In my opinion, the film should have stayed on this more surrealistic, darkly poetic course. Wilson should have stuck with this single villain, and the villain should have probably remained unexplained. The beginning of the film resembles some of the best recent Asian horror films, which tend to keep things more poetic and ambiguous.

However, Westerners tend to like their films explained, somewhat like piecing together the threads of a traditional mystery genre film, so Wilson has an explanation, and that's where things start to go south. The core explanation involves a plot that was mentioned during the opening scenes--it's why most folks, including the police force, are moving out of town--but it ends up making the intriguing monster from the beginning of the film somewhat superfluous, and never explains it very well, anyway.

The real monster ends up being a human, and the material surrounding this idea isn't nearly as smart or imaginative. Worse, Wilson introduces a similar monster to our now superfluous one from another town, and he also briefly introduces a completely different, completely superfluous plot that involves one of the three policemen. It also involves a very strange, unexplained action from another character from the other town. In a nutshell, as the film goes on, the plot and the explanations keep getting more and more needlessly complicated. Wilson keeps introducing new threads, and half of the time he seems to have forgotten about them, negating the whole motivation for going down the explanation route. With all the plot material introduced, he could have made four or five different films, at least. There's just way too much here, with way too many characters. It almost starts to feel like a bloated Stephen King miniseries that was edited down to 90 minutes.

It's too bad, because all along, you can see an excellent film trying to poke its head through the quagmire. Shallow Ground deserves a chance--it's certainly worth viewing for horror fans with the countless extremely positive qualities it has. Much of it is very exciting new American horror film-making. And if Wilson can revise his writing more carefully in the future--he needs to avoid the feeling that he needs to explain everything and he needs to be very careful not to take the explanation in too many directions--he could easily have a future masterpiece on his hands.

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.