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Unearthed
Directed by: Matthew Leutwyler Starring: Emmanuelle Vaugier, Luke Goss, Russell Means, Beau Garrett Synopsis: A sleepy town in New Mexico suddenly finds itself cut off from civilisation when a fuel tanker overturns, blocking the road. Something has been awakened at a nearby archaeological dig-site and is slaughtering cattle and humans alike. It is up to disgraced local sheriff Annie Flynn and a dangerous Indian called Kale to try and save the townfolk... Review: On the whole I'd highly recommend the After Dark: Movies to Die For series, which this is a part of. This particular entry is fair-to-middling, mainly because it tries too hard.
Basically this is let down by a rather lame creature and the way its presented onscreen. There are moments which work really well, where you only see glimpses of the creature as it attacks but the long-shots of a cgi alien just don’t work at all. If only they’d foregone the idea of revealing the creature so early, it would have made for a more effective movie.
Things start off well enough – mutilated bodies of cattle being discovered, a woman besieged in her store by a barely glimpsed creature – but at the midway point the movie goes for a Big Reveal on the creature and unfortunately the CGI isn’t up to the task.
The cast is pretty good – Emmanuelly Vaugier, fresh from CSI:NY makes for an interesting heroine. She plays a sheriff barely hanging on to her job following a tragedy that haunts her and she’s been hitting the bottle ever since. Russell Means played Chingachook, Hawkeye’s foster father in Michael Mann’s version of Last of the Mohicans, and gives a good performance here. My favourite cast member though is Luke Goss. Some of you may remember that Luke and his brother Matt were in a 80’s boyband called Bros. Over the past few years Luke has been knocking around in b-movies such as this, although he has a couple of high profile movies to his credit – he played the vampire Namek in Blade II and most recently as Prince in Hellboy II. Here he’s an Indian half-breed with his own agenda, and proves to be both help and hinderance to sheriff Flynn. Verdict: One of the weaker movies to come out of the After Dark series, but still watchable overall. I just wish they’d been a bit more conservative with their creature. 4 Out of 10 (MikeOutWest)
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