DIGGING UP THE MARROW (2014)

 DIRECTED & WRITTEN BY Adam Green

STARRING - Adam Green as Himself, Ray Wise as William Dekker, Will Barratt as Himself

PLOT - Horror movie director Adam Green receives a package in the post from a mysterious man named William Dekker who claims to have proof of the existence of a tribe of monsters, mutants and rejects from society who live underground in a place known as the Marrow.

Accompanied by his cinematographer Will, Adam goes to meet Dekker and soon the two young filmmakers find themselves drawn into Dekker's fantastic and sometimes nightmarish world.

But is Dekker really who he claims to be and what secrets lie within the darkest depths of the Marrow ?...

PERFORMANCES - If the fact that cult horror director Adam Green not only directs, writes and plays himself as the main character leads you to think that Digging Up The Marrow is something of a vanity project then you wouldn't be far off the mark (it clearly is), is it any good though ?

Thankfully the answer is yes. Vanity projects like this do have a tendency to be absolutely bloody awful, usually full of smug self fetishism and all too knowing nods and winks. Green admittedly does dip his toes into these potentially choppy waters here, however he's a skillful enough filmmaker to know when to pull back and just let the story do the talking. Any nods and winks present are purely more on a fanboy level and this geeky enthusiasm shines through into the film and saves it from being too self indulgent.

Indeed Green plays himself as a straight down the line horror geek. He loves monsters, has done since he was a kid. So when he gets a mysterious letter from a man claiming to know the whereabouts of a tribe of honest to God REAL monsters then Green naturally responds to this with a level of enthusiasm comparable to what a fly would have to a lovely big pile of fresh dog shit. To say he's all over it would be an understatement. 

As the story progresses Green's at first infectious enthusiasm eventually starts to grate with his colleagues (particularly his cinematographer Will Barratt - who also plays himself and acts as a more deadpan foil to Green's excesses) and also starts to upset his wife. As Green's obsession grows he starts to make bad decisions and eventually puts himself, his friends and family unknowingly in danger. To say he's a director first and foremost and an actor second it's not a bad performance, nothing amazing but it does the job well enough.

The real star of the show though is, of course, the ever brilliant Ray Wise who plays Dekker, the mysterious man who knows where the monsters live.

Wise is one of my favourite actors, he has been ever since he stole the show as Leland Palmer in Twin Peaks many years ago. He was brilliant then and he's just as brilliant here.

Dekker is a strange and quirky character. You never quite know what he's going to do from one moment to the next. One minute he's chatty and talkative, the next he's yelling at Adam like a dead eyed psycho. One minute he's listening to cheesy old zither music, the next he's relating a spine chilling tale about how the monsters sometimes kill. One minute he's cheerfully naming the species of monsters he's discovered ("Little Bigfoot" being my favourite), the next he's breaking down into tears over something or other. As the story progresses it transpires that Dekker has secrets of his own, there's a mystery surrounding him as well as a sense of loneliness and despair that drives him. In short (much like Leland Palmer) it was a role that Wise was born to play, and you can tell he's having a lot of fun doing so.

SFX - Although this movie is a mockumentary/found footage hybrid (neither genre being particularly noted for being especially effects heavy) we nevertheless do get some pretty good monster effects for our money (all practical I'm happy to say).

Some range from cartoonishly grotesque...

Whilst others are much more intimidating and horrifying.

Best of all is the hulking mutant powerhouse called Vance who acts as guardian to the Marrow's entrance and successfully succeeds in scaring the living shit out of Adam, Dekker and Will. You can hardly blame them to be fair...

VIOLENCE - We never see any violence or gore onscreen but there's always the constant threat of it not very far away. 

Whether it's in the form of the chilling tale Dekker tells of the monster named Brella (she has the body of a beautiful woman but keeps her hideous face hidden behind a veil, she preys on horny young men and kills them after having sex with them. Wise, for his part, tells this creepy tale in a wonderful "campfire ghost story" style), or the not so veiled threat that the Marrow's inhabitants leave with Adam to warn him off from further snooping at the film's end. The threat of violence is always under the story's surface, hidden away like the community of freaks and monsters. This gives the film a nice dark feel and serves to illustrate just how deep over his head Adam is unknowingly getting.

RATING - Digging Up The Marrow is a pleasantly quirky little monster movie. It's atmospheric, sometimes funny, sometimes disturbing. Conceptually it totally rips off Clive Barker's NightBreed stories but is just different enough to feel like a fresh take regardless.

It's Mockumentary/found footage mashup style may grate a bit for some people who felt burnt out by the overabundance of found footage movies in the early 00's, but again this is done well enough to feel fresher and more original than most movies done in this style.

Even if none of the above appeals to you it's still worth seeing just for Ray Wise's performance if nothing else.

4 and a half Marrow monsters out of 5, Well worth your time.

ART -