In the Earth review: An old-school, pandemic-set horror film with razor-sharp teeth

Dir: Ben Wheatley. Starring: Joel Fry, Reece Shearsmith, Hayley Squires, Ellora Torchia, John Hollingworth, Mark Monero. Cert 15, 108 mins

Ben Wheatley has found himself back in the embrace of the familiar, following the most bizarre project of his career so far – a Netflix adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, stripped almost entirely of its psychosexual desires and Gothic palette. His latest finds himself on far sturdier ground, harking back to the gnarly violence and wild psychedelics of 2011’s Kill List and 2013’s A Field in England.

In the Earth is a horror film with razor-sharp teeth, even if the relative flimsiness behind that facade betrays its spur-of-the-moment inception. The film was written and shot mid-pandemic, over the course of 15 days last August, and is set during a similar (if not the same) outbreak. But this isn’t a cheap exploitation of our current horror. Instead, Wheatley chases the primal fears that it’s brought to the surface – how we all live at nature’s mercy, despite how distant and disconnected we are from its rhythms. In the Earth isn’t set in a hospital or a quarantined home, but in one of the many neglected and mostly forgotten woodlands of Great Britain.

Scientist Martin Lowery (Joel Fry) has come to assist in the work of Dr Wendle (Hayley Squires), who’s implanted herself deep in the forests outside Bristol in order to study the mycorrhiza – the symbiotic relationship shared by plants and fungi. Accompanied by park ranger Alma (Ellora Torchia), he enters what’s still said to be the kingdom of Parnag Fegg, an ancient, protective spirit. There’s a dread that grows with every step he takes. It clings to the air like the wall of mist and mushroom spores that forms a prison around any unlucky wanderer.

Eventually, they find Dr Wendle, but they also find the bedraggled and shadowy Zach (Reece Shearsmith, just unrecognisable enough behind his beard and ringlets that his performance feels transformative). The two of them are bound to a strange war of ideas. One believes that science is the key to understanding nature’s drive, the other looks to art and ritual. Wheatley doesn’t have all that much more to say on the subject before he dives into the film’s main attraction: a charmingly old-school approach to gore, paired with an oppressive soundscape and a rattling Clint Mansell score.

Since the mythology at play isn’t quite as deep or convincing enough to be truly haunting, the most memorable facet of In the Earth is actually how unfailingly polite everyone is through these tortures. Wheatley’s film seems just as interested in social rituals as pagan ones – it’s all “please may I hack off this limb” or “would you mind terribly if I made you a human sacrifice?”. There’s something so darkly humorous in Fry’s performance, in the way he’ll simply shrug and let his long limbs flop around like a rag doll, ready to accept whatever terrible fate may befall him. Wheatley may fear nature’s inscrutable wrath, but humans are all too predictable.