The Burrowers

Now available on DVD

Cast:



Doug Hutchison as Henry Victor



Clancy Brown as John Clay



William Mapother as Will Parcher



Sean Patrick Thomas as Callaghan



Karl Geary as Coffey

Directed by J.T. Petty

Review:

It’s a common lament among genre fans that with the horror landscape increasingly dominated by sequels and remakes, originality is rarely found in contemporary fright fare. While I feel that as a rule, originality has always been in short supply I think what’s really galling is that on those rare occasions when original films are made, they get marginalized because studios don’t know how to market something different. After all, Warner Bros. has kept Trick ‘r Treat on the shelf for two years now, despite unanimous raves from those who have seen it. Maybe horror would be more widely embraced by audiences and critics if films that broadened the genre’s potential – rather than teen-pandering retreads like 2008’s Prom Night – were given more support by studios. It doesn’t bother me that an easy sell like H2, Rob Zombie’s latest contribution to the Halloween saga, will be seen in theaters coast to coast but what does bother me is that a film that isn’t a part of a franchise or that doesn’t comply with current trends, like writer/director J.T. Petty’s exemplary horror western The Burrowers, doesn’t earn a fraction of that exposure.

Horror fans were rightfully up in arms last year over Lionsgate’s borderline-malicious bungling of Midnight Meat Train‘s distribution and the studio proves once again with their mishandling of The Burrowers that sometimes it just doesn’t pay to do good work. It’s obnoxious that the same company that’s made an obscene amount of money with the Saw films can’t be bothered to give an ambitious horror film like The Burrowers a wide theatrical release (or give it a DVD worthy of its quality – aside from an informative commentary by Petty and actor Karl Geary, this disc offers only paltry extras and carelessly lists an erroneous running time of 124 minutes, rather than the correct 96) and with its lush widescreen framing (thankfully preserved on the disc, at least), The Burrowers is a movie that cries out to be seen on the big screen. Within just a few minutes of watching The Burrowers, I couldn’t believe that a movie with so much thoughtfulness paid to its visuals was not given more of a chance to be seen in theaters. With its scenic portrayal of the Old West (credit to cinematographer Phil Parmet for his indispensable contribution), this is one of the most handsomely shot horror films in recent memory.

As The Burrowers unfolds, it’s quickly apparent that aside from the care he shows to mood and atmosphere, Petty has an uncommon grip on the facets of character and story. Nothing in The Burrowers happens strictly for shock value (although many moments do pack a considerable surprise) and although Western fans will note several archetypes among the cast of characters, their presence is never a function of lazy writing. This is an elegiac essay on often-flawed frontier ways and an open critique of the values many of the early settlers brought to America – all of which is gracefully intertwined with a creepy monster movie and a Western shoot ‘em up (thanks due to Petty for staging his gun fights and other action scenes sans the manic approach of modern cinema).

Petty’s tale begins with a nighttime attack on a frontier family – an attack assumed by those who come across the aftermath to be the work of marauding Indians – that leaves all dead except the family’s eldest daughter who’s missing and assumed to have been kidnapped by her attackers. As in the 1956 John Ford classic, The Searchers, a search and rescue group – including such familiar faces as Highlander‘s Clancy Brown, X-Files‘ Doug Hutchinson and Lost‘s William Mapother – is assembled to locate and retrieve the girl. What no one knows is that this attack was not the work of Indians. Instead, it was the work of a group of carnivorous creatures that live under the earth (a collection of loathsome, Lovecraft-flavored beasts expertly rendered – at times by old-fashioned rubber-suit means – by FX wiz Robert Hall and his company Almost Human), emerging from the ground at night to attack their prey.

By setting his cast of characters out in pursuit of the missing daughter under the false assumption of an Indian kidnapping, Petty is able to comment on the prevailing racism of the time but in a matter-of-fact, rather than heavy-handed, manner. Petty injects a cautionary environmental message into his film as well, explaining that the Burrowers have existed for ages but until recent years only fed on roaming buffalo. When the whites came to America and started slaughtering the Burrower’s food supply with no consideration of upsetting the eco-system, that’s when the Burrowers were forced to find another source of sustenance. For the most part, Petty portrays the actions that lead to suffering and misfortune not as villainous or evil but rather careless and ignorant (in doing so, Petty evokes classic Romero – specifically the original Night of the Living Dead and The Crazies). With The Burrowers, Petty has delivered the rare modern horror film to traffic in the kind of incisive social commentary that used to be a hallmark of the genre in the ’70s. It also reminds one of a time when true irony was applied by horror filmmakers, to the end of making bitter, dyspeptic observations, not just irony as most audiences understand it today with pop-culture addled characters making snarky asides about the trappings of the genre.

Although the presence of underground monsters might recall the ‘graboids’ of Tremors (1990), fans shouldn’t expect to find the same jocular camp humor of that cult classic here. This is not a send-up or a tongue-in-cheek exercise. It’s a brooding, dramatic horror western that serves fans of both genres well. It’s just a shame that outside of a handful of fortunate film festival attendees, Lionsgate didn’t see fit to give audiences a chance to experience Petty’s work in theaters. Languidly paced by current standards and rich in character, The Burrowers proves to be something of a buried treasure.