Born of Earth (2011)

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Blistering performances.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

In the small town of Prophet Hills, Danny Kessler (Baldwin) witnesses some creatures crawl out of the earth and rip his wife apart in their kitchen. The creatures disappear underground taking his kids with them. 5 years later, Danny returns to prophet Hills and no one is happy to see him. The corrupt Mayor (Dourif) has covered up other creatures sightings and attacks and the Sheriff (Russo) listens to the mayor. While they try to run Danny back out of town, he is there to save his sister-in-law Kelly (Kincer) from what he fears will be another attack from the underground creatures. No one believes him and of course he's right as the final third of this film has the creatures attack the town. The creatures are cool looking and even though it's just actors in suits they look better than if they would have gone digital. Director Tommy Brunswick spills some blood in the conclusion but the problem is the pacing. After an exciting opening we go a very long time before seeing the creatures again. Joseph Thompson's story really doesn't break new ground anywhere and the movie suffers from that. Some fun can still be salvaged if you can get past the slow parts.

After witnessing his wife murdered and his children stolen by subterranean creatures Danny Kessler goes for a five year stroll (I assume, as we don't find out where he's been) Only to return on the night the creatures decide to eat the town.Born of earth is a cheaply made and flawed movie. That being said I still quite enjoyed it. The plot is predictable and old yet still quite fun. After the opening the story takes a while to get going again but becomes fairly enjoyable when the monsters start killing everyone.The creatures themselves are a little silly looking. I often find with creature movies that I wished I'd seen a little more of the creatures but that was not the case here. There was no subtlety, they were constantly squat walking or bouncing across the screen looking quite ridiculous. I won't mention the effect when one of them is killed. The gore effects on the other hand are fairly decent. There's a couple of good kills in there and these creatures sure love munching on entrails.The acting is a bit hit and miss Daniel Baldwin is OK and Brad Dourif is good despite being dressed in a suit twice his size but everyone else is your standard B-movie grade acting.So Born of earth was a movie I did end up quite enjoying but I doubt many others will.

Contains spoilers. If you like stiff, uncomfortable acting and a threadbare plot, you may like this one. It's just another in the long line of cheap-o low budget horror and sci-fi flicks that have been flooding the market lately. Someone seems to have too much money on their hands, but just not quite enough to buy decent material. Right from the opening the suck starts. We see that thousands of years ago there was a battle between the demons and the humans. The demons retreated underground... until now! They should have stayed underground. The movie starts with the usual annoying scene. The wife sees some things coming up out of the ground in her yard at night. Instead of calling for her husband, who is just upstairs, she grabs a kitchen knife and runs out into the dark. "Hello? Who's there?" And of course she's killed. By the most non threatening silly looking creatures ever to crawl up out of the ground. And so it goes. Five years later the creatures return and start picking off the towns residents one by one. Only no one could possibly care because none of the characters is likable. Daniel Baldwin is still struggling to find his place in his brother's shadow. Brad Dourff is just an empty suit playing the briefly lived mayor doing his best to squash the rumors of people killing monsters, lest the greedy developers pull out of their plans of building condos and bringing a spark of something into the boring town. Sound familiar?And so it goes. When the group of humans try to flee from the creatures that came up from under the ground where do they run to? Undergrounnd of course. This movie is predictable and lame. Don't waste your time.