the burrowers

little fish...



when fergus coffey (karl geary) arrives at the house of his fiance, maryanne (jocelin donahue), he finds that her and her family are missing, their neighbours have been killed and indians are the likely suspects. and so, teaming up with two experienced frontiersmen - parcher (william mapother) and ??? (clancy brown) - and the fresh-faced son of the lady parcher is courting, they set out to find the missing family. along the way, they find strange disturbances on the ground and a captured indian talks of how "the burrowers" will be coming for them...

well, i'd heard a tiny bit about this before seeing it, but not much: only enough to think that it looked like a serious, but vaguely 'tremors'-esque, western / horror hybrid. and, at it's most simple, that's what it is. it is not a 'tremors 4' rip-off...

it is, however, excellent.

some reviews i've read, since yesterday, seem to moan about the pace of the film, but i thought it was judged just right. from the off, the film begins moving at a good pace, playing like a straight western with elements of its horror/fantasy side being slowly introduced and progressively building up to the reveal of what, exactly, "the burrowers" are. now, what makes the film stronger, is the fact that we don't just have a mixed bag of characters coming together in adversity and fighting a common foe. as one might expect. what we actually get is a collection of characters who have their own agendas, histories and lives beyond what is shown on screen. and, as a result, the film is much stronger.

in filling these roles geary does a good job as coffey and clancy brown is as great as you'd expect, plus there's good turns from doug hutchison and sean patrick thomas. william mapother - who i only know as ethan from 'lost' - deserves a special mention.

the film itself looks beautiful, with great cinematography and costume / character design getting the best from the new mexican backdrop. on top of this are some rather ugly scenes of violence and human nature, which make for an atmosphere of unease on top of the impending dread of the monsters that sit below. the monsters themselves are pretty nasty looking puppet / people in suit / cgi hybrids, that i wouldn't like to bump into in the real world.

there you go, a bit of a messy summation, but what you gonna do...

it's a shame that this isn't going to hit the cinemas in the us (and i doubt it will here), but a dvd should hit in april...

great stuff...