Dig Deeper (Shallow Ground (DVD))

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Product:	Shallow Ground (DVD)
Date:	03/05/07 (85 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Lots of promise

Disadvantages: Bad direction, bad acting

In a small, rural, American town the local sheriff's station is closing down - much to the relief of two of the officers on duty. As they pack everything into their truck, their final task is to wait for a prisoner to sober up, a local man who spends far too much time in the cells for his own good. The sheriff, Jack Shepherd, is equally pleased to be moving out, but is not as active as his two deputies. Shepherd is haunted by the death of a lcoal girl, who was abducted and murdered by a vicious killer. Although Shepherd initially discovered the girl alive, in his attempts to get help, she eventually died. It doesn't help that the girl's father holds him directly responsible - and seldom misses an opportunity to tell him.

In the calm of the woods, a disturbing character approaches the sheriff's office. Whilst one of the deputies struggles to fit everything into the back of, he is alerted by a scream from the office, where a grisly scene awaits. A young boy is stood in the office, completely naked except for a liberal and oozing covering in blood, in his hand a large hunting knife that would appear to have been uised for some barberous act. The boy's target appears to be Jack Shepherd - every photo ot the sheriff on the walls of the office is now defaced by a smeared, bloody fingerprint.

Incarcerated in an interview room, the boy says nothing. As the sheriff and his deputies debate what to do, a local medic is called and asked to sample the blood to determine whether it is human. The answers are conclusive - the blood is human, and contains the DNA of at least three people. As the police team struggles to comprehend what is going on, a strange message, daubed in human blood, appears on the internal office door - and a tendril of the flowing, seeping fluid starts to trickle out from under the door. For Jack Shepherd, as night falls and daylight fails, the woods yield even deeper and darker secrets.

From the opening credits onwards, Shallow Ground promises to be a rather gruesome little tale. Snatched images of mutilated human flesh, corpses arranged in bizarre positions and skin being ripped by fish hooks fill the screen in a claustrophobic and foreboding manner. It's intriguing, and really rather unsettling and as the film opens up, you really do wonder what is going to happen. Sadly, once you've sat through the entire film and the final credits roll, you will still have as many questions as you did at the start - the main one being, what was that all about?

Shallow Ground is a mess. A real mess. Confused, erratic and, at times, very poorly-made, it promises much and delivers very little. Part serial killer story and part supernatural mystery, it combines several plot elements in a very twisted, implausible manner. It's as subtle as broom hanlde up yoru backside and where other directors may have chosen to use suspense and intrigue, the director (Sheldon Wilson) has instead opted to cover the whole thing in lashings of blood and guts. The problem with this is that the director seems to forget what's happening as things progress and therefore draws on various ideas and parts of his imagination to keep things running. The downside is that some scenes make no sense / contribution whatsoever. A scuttle of spiders that start to appear out of the young boy's face, for example, is never really explained. Shallow Ground is not so much an exercise in story telling. It's really more like a download of every idea sat in Sheldon Wilson's brain, partly inspired by countless serial killer films and partly inspired by the likes of Clive Barker - but nowhere as good as either.

The direction is very poor. Set in remote woodlands, Sheldon seems completely unable to utilise the potential of the setting, failing in any attempt to be creepy or atmospheric. Vicious editing and stuttered filming mean that rather than snaking around the trees and lanes, every one seems to run and jump. It doesn't change at night either. Everything's the same, but just set in the dark. With a clearly limited budget, special effects are minimised (anyone can run torrents of blood all over the place) and the (not insignificant) potential that I could see for astounding visuals was completely missed. The choice of location is, in itself, very uninspiring and more likely to have been chosen because it was cheap rather than because it looked right.

Shallow Ground is, for a time, quite intriguing. There seems to be so much going on that you do wonder what on earth it's all about. It soon becomes clear, for example, that something supernatural is going on, but it's not a question of hints and clues - it's more like being beaten around the head with a club. Make that being beaten around the head with a club repeatedly. First the scene cuts to a flashback of some nutcase in the woods, then it flashes back to the boy having a strange turn in the jail, then it cuts to the doctor who (for whatever reason) is alone in her van and somebody is creeping up on her and then - bang! - it's back to the sheriff's office and around we go again. It really is quite breathless and pretty soon wears you out. Sheldon's definition of "suspense" is derived from music - eerie, creepy, slithering music means "watch out". Loud, crashing music means "you were supposed to jump at that bit". It all starts to wear very thin, very quickly and all I found myself thinking was "what an amateur!"

To make matters worse, the cast is pretty dodgy too. Jack Shepherd is played by a lifeless Irish actor named Timothy V Murphy. He really over-eggs the cake, intent on being intense and powerful but instead being, well, pretty crap really. His supporting cast isn't much better - Patricia MacCormack's Helen Reedy should've been called Helen Needy. The male deputy - Stuart Dempsey - has one of those faces that you're sure you recognise but even though I researched him from US soap General Hospital (gawd!), I'm pretty sure that's not where I recognised him from. Either way, he isn't very inspiring. The other deputy, Laura, is pretty snivelling and weak too. Between the lot of them, there isn't a single person to like, admire or empathise with. The only slightly appealing turn comes from Rocky Arquette as the boy - and that's only because he has a nice backside.

I was really disappointed with Shallow Ground. (Did you notice?) Revered on the Internet as a fantastic achievement with $70,000 (fair point) I still can't forgive the fact that it was simply wasn't a good film. The biggest travesty is the wasted potential. I liked so many different ideas and just thought "I'd have done that so differently." I'm quite sure that for, whatever reason, Shallow Ground will have a cult following and that demand for a sequel will be high. Only if Sheldon Wilson was to stay well clear of it would I entertain such a suggestion.

Not recommended

Summary: Disappinting execution of promising tale