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.

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 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.

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.

This was honestly a very different type of film. I am not very conversant with Adam Green's films (I surely PLAN to become that way though...) so I didn't really know what to expect.

Since I usually look at movies from the standpoint of 'film making', I think that I can see what he was trying to do with this one. A very unusual approach indeed... I think what I liked about it (other than the bloody FANTASTIC Ray Wise, of course) is the change in tone as you watch it. At the beginning it actually is quite funny and as the 'Trivia' section mentions, the entire film was very carefully scripted, although it does NOT come across that way at all. So, with that in mind, I really appreciated the genuine and natural humour that he drew out of the movie, especially with many of his own reactions to what was being said by others. He is really funny. But, I liked that as you became more engrossed in the story and began to see Adam's interest in the reality of the stories he was being told have an effect on him, I really liked the change in tone as things got more serious. I very much liked that and thought that they did an excellent job in switching gears, as it were...

Whether you suspend disbelief enough to become invested in the story or not, I truly found the film in it's entirety to be very entertaining. A LOT of the entertainment value come from Adam's own life and real friends and family being portrayed and his excellent interaction with them when talking about this 'Project'. Most of the rest of the entertainment value comes directly from the always awesome Ray Wise. He was frigg'n GREAT the whole way, in my lowly and wretched opinion. His VERY subtle turns at absolute DEADPAN humour were totally hilarious! And Adam's reaction to them was just as great. As far as the actual story being told and the 'Documentary' approach, sure, if you have an active imagination like I do, you can get caught up in that too...

I think that people who automatically dismiss the film because Ray Wise, a very well known actor, is in it, are missing the point of the movie. As mentioned in the 'Trivia' section here, they REALLY agonized on whether to use someone well known as the main guy or not. But, after giving it a lot of thought and getting audience's reactions, they realized that to approach the movie as a fully genuine 'True' story and then LATER likely disappoint the audience or make them feel 'fooled' was something that they did not want to do, as some other 'Mockumentaries' have fallen victim to. So, this way, the audience KNOWS right from the start that it is fiction, but at the same time by cleverly using Adam and his family and friends as REAL people along with their choice of Ray Wise, they came up with a very unique and interesting balance for this kind of movie.

So, this is quite honestly an EXTREMELY difficult film to recommend to people in general. As you can see from the many varied reviews here, that the reactions are truly all OVER the place. I personally think that if you are a film maker yourself, OR if you look at films from a film maker or director's perspective, OR if you have a real love and affection for the Horror Genre itself, THEN you will have a much greater chance at really enjoying this unique and entertaining film.