“I was right . . . It was never dead.”
In a desert town, a monster revives after hundreds of years to continue its rampage of bloody mayhem.
This is the last movie in our series on the After Dark Horrorfest Movie series. Today’s movie is Unearthed, a movie about a desert and its monster.
TITLE:
UNEARTHED
Director:
Matthew Leutwyler
Writer:
Matthew Leutwyler
GENRE:
Horror, Thriller,
DESCRIPTORS:
Horror, Desert Community, Native Americans, Archeology, Monsters, Science, Alcoholism.
RATING:
Rated R
SUMMARY:
Sheriff Annie Flynn is an alcoholic and about to be voted out of office when she gets the call about truck overturned on the only road leading to town. The driver turns out to be missing. Then cows are found butchered and devoured. Trying to fend off the bottle, work with a resentful community and make it to next week’s vote, Annie turns to a native American botanist Caya for help determining the origin of a piece of . . . something . . . found at the wreckage.
That thing nearly annihilated the entire tribe.
Several travelers driving through Hat Creek stop off at Caya’s grandfather’s gas station only to find it out of gas and not likely to get any until the next day. Meanwhile, Kale, an intense young archaeologist who has been working at a near by dig, discovers proof for his theories about the native American people who once lived in that region. However, what he doesn’t realize is that a creature was unearthed in his excavations and it isn’t dead.
As night falls, people in the small community begin to meet bad ends. The monster is fast and impervious to harm. To make matters worse, Kale has his own ideas about how to deal with the creature and it means capturing the survivors, including Sheriff Flynn and Caya to use as bait.
APPEAL:
Despite the problems, I enjoyed watching this movie. There is something about the unstoppable voracious monster plowing through a herd of hapless humans that really makes for an enjoyable movie event. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not rooting for the monster, but I enjoy a story where all the dice are loaded in the monster’s favor and the humans don’t have a chance unless they get real smart and real brave.
The monster stayed in the shadows and remained convincing. Considering that this was a low budget production, I was impressed with the special effects including the CGI.
Unfortunately, the movie had lighting problems making some scenes difficult to follow. Also the scene between the grandfather and Kale was too murky and I lost most of the information that passed between them which marred my enjoyment of the story.
The movie was weak on characters. I think with another writer, the Grandfather, Caya and even Sheriff Flynn could have been more compelling to the viewer which would have increased the horror effect tremendously. It would have made the final scene incredibly powerful and satisfying. But, that said, it wasn’t a bad monster romp.
WATCHALIKES:
Unearthed is one of the many offspring of Ridley Scott’s Alien
. Released in 1979, Alien still holds up exceptionally well. Get the director’s cut, get a bowl of popcorn and watch it late at night with the lights off. It’s a classic that never fails to scare.
You can order either the 2006 After Dark Horrorfest: 8 Films to Die For
or the 2007 After Dark Horrorfest: 8 Films to Die For
collected 8 movie set from Amazon by clicking on the titles.
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