I once dug up some potatoes, but never made a found footage mockumentary about it. Digging Up The Marrow does involve a lot of holes in the ground, no potatoes that I saw, but I think the tunnels in Digging Up The Marrow ended up going all the way to Midian. Do you like what I did there? Will you like this movie? Who knows. Do you like the idea that there are monsters lurking in the shadows? I have almost convinced myself that big foot is real so why not "monsters." We all know that: 'God is an astronaut, Oz is over the rainbow, and Midian is where the monsters go." Midian:Marrow?
Digging Up The Marrow explores the concept of monsters, using the found footage mockumentary as the vehicle of choice. Adam Green is making a documentary about monsters and is contacted by a man called William Dekker who is none other than Ray Wise. Mr Dekker (not Dr Decker?) claims that monsters are real, and he can prove it. Apparently monsters live in a hole in the ground and the tunnels they presumably dig. This place is called the marrow, and digging it up is to reveal what lurks beneath. What follows are interviews with Mr Dekker and a cat and mouse game with the monsters that escalates in intensity. Is Dekker faking the whole thing? Why does he have a thick chain and padlock on one of the doors in his house? You will have to watch the movie to find out.
Digging Up The Marrow is a found footage movie in a sense but unlike a lot of these movies that usually have non actors desperately trying to act we have the excellent Ray Wise acting like he is not an actor and doing a good job of it. I am yet to watch a movie with Ray Wise that he was not convincing in the role he played. The movie is, like a lot of these found footage movies, slow paced until the last act where everything happens all at once. There are a couple of jump scares along the way, some are more effective than others. There is just about enough happening in the middle padding of the movie to get the viewer to its crescendo and ending. An ending that just doesnt work for me.
Nightbreed give us a society of monsters with structure and culture and invoked empathy for the "monster." Digging Up The Marrow is a very different beast. A more simplistic film, and a more simplistic monster, they just exist. The closest we get to their activities is a story that one monster apparently had a sexual encounter with a young man then seemingly dismembered him. Why? I guess that is more or less my reaction to this movie... why?
As a horror movie in the found footage/mockumentary genre it is a more watchable movie than most. It also has the acting talent of Ray Wise. You could treat it as a Nightbreed tribute in a way, it certainly makes me want to watch a "better" movie... maybe Nightbreed?
5 out of 10.