In the first half of the 2010's, Ben Wheatley was one of the most promising British filmmakers, releasing, in a span of only three years, "Kill List"(2011), "Sightseers" (2012) and "A Field in England"(2013, a personal favorite, but it's this one where you'd see him flirting too dangerously with the abyss).
In the second half of the same decade, he didn't meet the expectation, whiffing on big projects like Ballard's "High Rise" (that I liked) and Du Maurier's "Rebecca" (didn't), yet I remained his (staunch) defender, looking only for the good things, justifying him by telling myself he's uncompromising and his audience is in the future. With "In the Earth", I'm afraid all the credits are used with me and, if I were his friend, I'd perform an intervention, making him return to his roots and rediscover what worked in the past (his work was always unconventional, but it wasn't a point of emphasis, serving a greater purpose/ an actual content and meaning, something he now sorely lacks and a thing "In the Earth", his latest movie, is void of (the disappointment being bigger because everything that advertised it - the trailer, the synopsis, the phenomenal stone poster - promised something special and substantial, something to quell all the criticism, instead of supporting it. I find myself still choosing my words around Wheatley, so let me phrase it like this - right now, "In the Earth" is an alien to me - I don't know what it is, what it does, what it wants or what audience can it have. Personally, it felt like a bad-trip psychedelic after which you feel awful about yourself.
In the second half of the same decade, he didn't meet the expectation, whiffing on big projects like Ballard's "High Rise" (that I liked) and Du Maurier's "Rebecca" (didn't), yet I remained his (staunch) defender, looking only for the good things, justifying him by telling myself he's uncompromising and his audience is in the future. With "In the Earth", I'm afraid all the credits are used with me and, if I were his friend, I'd perform an intervention, making him return to his roots and rediscover what worked in the past (his work was always unconventional, but it wasn't a point of emphasis, serving a greater purpose/ an actual content and meaning, something he now sorely lacks and a thing "In the Earth", his latest movie, is void of (the disappointment being bigger because everything that advertised it - the trailer, the synopsis, the phenomenal stone poster - promised something special and substantial, something to quell all the criticism, instead of supporting it. I find myself still choosing my words around Wheatley, so let me phrase it like this - right now, "In the Earth" is an alien to me - I don't know what it is, what it does, what it wants or what audience can it have. Personally, it felt like a bad-trip psychedelic after which you feel awful about yourself.