DVD Review: UNEARTHED

Review by Stephen Jones —

I think the most reassuring thing about UNEARTHED is that it came out in 2004, and I’m only hearing about it now. That means it’s a fairly obscure movie, and that it isn’t likely to be very widely seen. Of all the tragically overlooked movies of the past decade, this is one that deserves every bit of its obscurity. It’s currently available on Netflix instant, and some of the more inexorable video stores might have the DVD available to rent or to buy, but honestly the best thing to do is to avoid this movie altogether.

The movie follows a few different plots going on at once, primarily involving an archaeology professor who unearths an artifact during a dig in the middle of a Floridian city. The dig is under frequent threats to get shut down by a slimy CEO type to put a building on the site, in a series of developments that left me with fond memories of the Super Mario Brothers movie. Meanwhile a pair of detectives (one of whom is played by Tom Savini) investigates a series of shootouts involving homeless people. There’s also an alien who is after the artifact for reasons that are never really well explained.

There are few redeeming qualities about this movie. The makeup effects are downright impressive at times given how low the budget must’ve been. There’s also something of a twist involving the mysterious gun-toting character that I won’t give away, but was actually pretty refreshing considering he was otherwise a fairly stock character that even good movies tend to use in the exact same way. Unfortunately the good is surrounded by awful acting, shoddy sound work, and amateurish direction, and even the best things about it aren’t remotely good enough to make up for the rest.

The fact that this is a low budget, straight to video movie isn’t the reason not to see it. I stress that because there are plenty of movies that don’t get good releases and are made for no money that turn out to be excellent. UNEARTHED isn’t bad because of its budget, it’s bad because Craig Kovach wrote a terrible, cliché ridden script with underdeveloped characters and plots. None of the characters are appealing, the action scenes are dull, the monsters aren’t scary, and the story amounts to absolutely nothing. I take back what I said earlier about it being reassuring that it took six years for me to hear about UNEARTHED. I don’t think six years is long enough.