Watch Digging Up the Marrow For Free

Good movie but grossly overrated

A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

The first must-see film of the year.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Adam Green who has given us "Hatchet" which I praised and "Frozen" which was a bore, brings us a semi-documentary style film as his late entry into the hand held genre craze. Yes, even during the disco era, most respected rockers broke down and did a disco song.In this feature, Adam Green played himself. He is contacted by retired detective William Dekker (Ray Wise) about a group of "monsters" or deformed humans who live underground in what he calls "The Marrow." They travel around with a camera getting a lot of pictures of nothing and then like all hand held genre films, things pick up in the last few minutes.The monster make-up was excellent, however Adam Green in front of the camera was not. In fact most of the horror film crowd who played themselves in front of the camera were a yawn including Kane Hodder without a hockey mask.Worth a Redbox rental

In Clive Barker's NIGHTBREED, we were introduced to an entire underground civilization; in THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, we viewed what was purported to be "found footage" of a missing group of young filmmakers gone in search of a legendary witch; combine these ideas (being careful not to inject any much-needed humor or originality) and what you end up with is DIGGING UP THE MARROW. I actually thought FROZEN was a fairly decent effort (if boring, when it came to the soap opera stuff), but this one had the potential to be something really interesting- but, again, the WRITING gets in the way. It's amateurish, to be frank- unpolished, to be kind; laughable, to be perfectly honest. If this were a project for a filmmaking class, one could kinda sorta overlook the embarrassingly amateurish script... but this isn't a school project, nor is it a first time effort: it's yet another go at commercial filmmaking by filmmakers who've done it before. From the looks of things, they're not learning from their mistakes.

-Digging Up The Marrow (2015) movie review: -This mockumentary follows a filmmaker who meets a man who claims he can prove 'monsters' exist.-I think mockumentaries are either more fun documentaries or more fun found footage films. Either way, Digging Up The Marrow kept me from sleeping, sooo….-The story is presents just like any of the shows about finding Bigfoot or whatever. So even though it may seem like a cliché film premise, it is presented in a way that seems like it is going to be the same as all the others. It kinda is, but it admits it is.-The pace was fine. I did not get bored.-None of the acting from the unknown cast was memorable or great, but I did not think anybody was bad. Especially having seen some of those monster quest shows.-There was not a lot of music, but whenever there was music, it almost broke the fourth wall because there should not be music in mockumentary/found footage films.-The practical effects in the film are impressive. And that was what the entire film was banking on, so I was not let down. The film also banks on a few pretty cliché jumpscares, but there are some unconventional scares that were effective.-My biggest beef with the movie is, and I won't spoil anything, the old guy's idea of the monsters. Basically this sorta-crazy Scooby-Doo villain claims that all monsters are made of social rejects and people who had birth defects and deformities. Basically he thinks there is a big underground society (called The Marrow) of them not. That premise really unsettles me. Because it is one thing to just have the idea of monsters, but it is another to have the idea of formerly deformed people underground. Makes it creepy to me, but not in a great way.-Digging Up The Marrow had a few things going against it, such as its overall cliché premise and unimpressive elements, but the film is successfully creepy and unsettling. I felt like this film had an amount of effectiveness to it, and therefore I will say that Digging Up The Marrow is worth watching on Nexflix. (Not worth paying for, but worth seeing.) -It holds a PG-13 rating for some scary images and some language. Nothing too heavy.

Horror is my favorite genre of movies, unfortunately for me, because there really just aren't that many good, watchable, horror movies produced and released - by watchable, I mean it holds your attention enough you WANT to see what happens, and you're not just watching it because you don't want to turn it off (which I've done, a lot) halfway through because it sucks so bad it just isn't entertainment, it's torture. (An idea for a horror movie maybe?Torture as in strapped to a chair and made to watch horrible horror movies with your eyelids taped open) This held my interestenough to watch it straight through, mostly because certain scenes had great potential, but it was never realized. There isn't any gore, but there really is a creep factor - the "Monster Hunter" comes off at first as an eccentric man, perhaps a bit (well, a lot) fixated on the subject - the 2 guys who are making the film are believable, and play themselveswell. The idea behind it is kind of cool, but there just aren't enough scenes (none, really) that will make you jump out of your chair, leave the lights on when you go to bed, or make the hair rise on the back of your neck. It's a watchable movie, certainly worth the $2.99 rental on Amazon, but not good enough to see in a theater. The ending of the movie had some good potential, but, it ends with lots of unresolved questions. Bottom line: Unambitious, had a lot of unrealized potential, but it still entertaining. Don't rent it expecting to be totally freaked out - it just really isn't that kind of movie, but interesting enough to sit through. The film makers give the impression that they couldn't decide how to end it, and as a result, it had potential to be great ending, but they just didn't flesh it out enough. I like indie horror movies - some are awesome - WER, an indie flick, was one of the best werewolf movies I've seen in recent years for example, but this just is middle of the road.