Reviews from Sundance: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/in_the_earth

I'm interested. I like most of his films and Free Fire was one of my favorite films that year. The biggest surprise was that he was doing Meg 2, since it's unlike anything he's ever done. He wants to get paid, so that's what you do.

Looks pretty scary. They got backwards letters and everything!

I have trust in Wheatley but the term “hallucinogenic horror” worries me a little. Sounds like it could end up being a nonsensical mess.

If it’s a “hallucinogenic horror”, then Nic Cage needs to be in it. I’ll check this out, unless the reviews torch this one.

It premiered at Sundance. Reviews are out.

Saw this at a local theater earlier this evening.

I'm a huge fan of Wheatley's work but I wouldn't put this amongst some of his best films.

There are interesting pieces but none of them add up to anything coherent or weighty.

I hadn’t come across the term 'hallucinogenic horror' until I read this thread, and it is an accurate description for parts of this movie. The trippy lightshow that Wheatley puts on will, I have to imagine, confuse most people, but for people who have medical conditions that make them photosensitive, those scenes can be downright dangerous. I’m not sure how many reviews have mentioned this, but people who suffer from seizures induced by flashing lights or who have similar reactions to that sort of stimulus really should be told before they walk into this movie.

Wheatley does his usual thing of putting genres into a blender, so you don’t just get hallucinogenic horror. I would say the bulk of this film is a paranoid thriller because the longer the film goes on, the more mistrusting you and the characters become. Wheatley also isn’t afraid to pull in close on open wounds and dwell on someone getting stitched up. There’s a running ‘gag’ involving the abuse of an extremity of one of the characters which I believe is intended to be darkly comedic, but to laugh at it, you have to be able to find someone else’s misery funny, even when they didn’t necessarily deserve what happens to them.

This is a film that was made during COVID, and its story feels in some ways that it was shaped by the pandemic. The main character arriving at a camp and being greeted by the staff wearing medical masks is a very much a reference to what was going in real life even though the virus in the film is never named. There are other signs, though, like the film’s obvious limited budget (Wheatley said in an interview that sanitizer and other COVID precautions ate into the funds for the movie) and how there are no shots containing more than three actors at a time. The idea that ‘Nature is a force of evil’ also draws inspiration from the pandemic.

In the Earth doesn’t reach the same heights as some of Wheatley’s previous work. For my money, Kill List is still at the top of the heap, and this film trails pretty far behind. If you’re into films that don’t volunteer all the answers to the questions it asks then this might be your cup of tea.