By Ben Bussey
I realise it’s bad form to start off a review with a stab at someone else’s, however… as well acquainted as we are with absurd, over-enthusiastic DVD cover quotes which invariably promise far more than the film itself ultimately has to offer, the choice of cover quote for Adam Green’s latest movie Digging Up The Marrow really does take the biscuit. Rather than declaring it the scariest and/or best film its kind since forever, as we’re well accustomed to being told, this particular quote – from the rather notable source of Ain’t It Cool News’s Harry Knowles – tells us that Digging Up The Marrow will “change the way you view the world.” Now, despite spending some time searching I’ve been unable to locate the source of this quote at the time of writing, so as I’m unaware of the context in which it was said I can’t really give a full assessment of that statement. But even so, as a pull-quote – wow. There’s hyperbole and then there’s hyperbole. I’m not quite sure what one’s angle on the world would have to have been in the first place for this film to significantly impact that vision. The only way Digging Up The Marrow has impacted my worldview is by bringing me to believe that Adam Green is even more self-satisfied than I took him to be beforehand.
Because I don’t want to assume that everyone is well aware of Adam Green and his body of work (an assumption the man himself seems quite comfortable making), here’s a brief primer: writer, director and producer Green came to prominence seemingly out of nowhere in the mid-2000s with Hatchet, an indie throwback to 80s slashers heavily promoted on social media as an antidote to the deluge of watered-down 70s remakes and Asian remakes that seemed to dominate the genre at the time. The film itself was fine as basic slashers go, if a little heavy on fan service with its numerous horror icon cameos and in-jokes. However, through the likes of the Hatchet sequels, anthology movie Chillerama and I gather in his sitcom Holliston (in which he plays himself)*, fan service and in-jokery has pretty much become Green’s stock-in-trade since. Whilst he clearly has some ambition to make a mark as a filmmaker, he seems a little too preoccupied with creating a mythology around himself as a key figure in contemporary horror fandom.
What makes Digging Up The Marrow such a disappointment is that it takes a genuinely interesting premise, but squanders it by keeping the focus squarely on building the legend of Adam Green. As a result, what might have been a hugely entertaining creature feature, of a kind we don’t see many of in contemporary indie horror, winds up instead a tedious exercise in flagrant narcissism.
As with Holliston, Green casts himself as himself in the lead, whilst esteemed screen veteran Ray Wise – who may get top billing, but most definitely plays second fiddle here – portrays William Dekker, a retired cop with a bizarre story to tell. Dekker says real monsters exist in a netherworld he calls the Marrow, and what’s more he says he knows how to get there, via an opening in the ground, by an old cemetery in the middle of a forest. Sceptical but intrigued, Green and his DP Will Barratt (also playing himself) agree to shoot a documentary about Dekker and explore his claims. Of course, it’s apparent immediately that Dekker is not playing with a full deck (pun absolutely intended), but even so there does seem to be something to his story. Pushing on despite the building tensions within the group, Green is determined to get to the bottom of things, and get some genuine hard evidence on camera that monsters really are among us.
Okay, credit where it’s due: with this premise, Digging Up The Marrow might easily have wound up yet another found footage horror, and it is commendable that Green resisted this, opting instead for a metatextual, pseudo-documentary format. As a horror fan and a sometime frequenter of festivals, the movie shows a world I recognise, and part of me is pleased to see that immortalised in this way. However, the film seems far more interested in showing us this world – and, sorry to sound like a broken record, Adam Green’s role in it – than it is in delving into the Marrow itself. The film is largely inspired by, and indeed takes its title from the artwork of Alex Pardee, who paints bizarre monsters and crafts a mythology around them; Wise’s Dekker is there to convey this mythology to us, from his years of experience watching the creatures and charting their history, culture and customs from a distance. Were the film to dive headfirst into this mythology, and make this the focal point, I for one would have found it considerably more interesting.
It occurred to me while watching Digging Up The Marrow that, back at FrightFest 2011, Adam Green hinted that he may have been approached to remake Troll Hunter** – a film with which Digging Up The Marrow most definitely shares a great deal of common ground. However, where Troll Hunter saw its initially dubious filmmakers throw their scepticism out the window once they saw the creatures with their own eyes, Digging Up The Marrow keeps its filmmakers sceptical – and its mysterious monster expert untrustworthy – even once it becomes clear that there is indeed some truth to his claims. This, combined with a slew of loose ends which are not tied up by the somewhat abrupt and anti-climactic finale, robs the film of any sense of wonder it might have had.
The main problem with Digging Up The Marrow – even putting to one side my hang ups about Green’s self-promotion – is that, despite the title, the potentially fascinating netherworld of the Marrow itself is barely dug into at all. The film feels to be about 95% people talking, with barely a handful scenes in which monsters come into play – and when they do at last emerge, it’s via obvious cheap jump scares. Green may aspire to do something better than found footage, but he doesn’t hesitate to fall back on the subgenre’s cliches. Worse yet, when the monsters are finally shown, they don’t all look that great; hell, a couple of them look like cast-offs from the Ghoulies movies. Even the ones that do look good we don’t get the chance to really appreciate, as they appear in fleeting, poorly lit, shakeycam shots (another found footage motif). Yet again, this is a crying shame, as Pardee’s artwork, which is shown in the film, could have resulted in some wonderfully unusual and cinematic creatures. I just don’t think this particular set-up, and this particular filmmaker, were the right choice to bring that vision to life.
Now, I will concede that it may be a little unfair of me to criticise Green for putting so much of himself into his movies, given that I myself frequently make a habit of working autobiographical aspects into my writing on film. I like to rabbit on at length about how being a lifelong horror fan informs my life – who am I to condemn Green for doing likewise in his work? Well, I would argue that there’s a time and a place. Criticism – editorials in particular, which are invariably based on personal perspective – is, to my mind, an acceptable arena for a writer to discuss such matters. Filmmakers, I think, are more than welcome to do so in interviews, behind the scenes videos, DVD commentary tracks. However, within the context of a feature film itself, unless you’re Orson Welles or Clint Eastwood (and very few are) I tend to think it’s more becoming of a filmmaker to avoid the spotlight. Even Tarantino got wise to this after Pulp Fiction. I trust Green comes to this understanding sooner rather than later, as in spite of his failings I do still think the makings of good filmmaker are in there somewhere. He just needs to learn to put the story first, and put his need for attention right to the back.
Digging Up The Marrow is out now on DVD from Kaleidoscope.
* I say ‘I gather’ as I’ve never actually seen Holliston, so obviously I don’t know how its tone and content compares with Digging Up The Marrow.
** I admit I could be mistaken about this – Green didn’t name the film he had been approached to remake, but did say it had played the festival that weekend (and Troll Hunter played that year). The matter came up in an on-stage discussion with a number of other US directors, which can be seen on the Revolver Blu-ray edition of The Woman.