Shallow Ground (2005)

Excellent but underrated film

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

This movie badly suffers from the M. Night Shyamalan syndrome, meaning that writer Sheldon Wilson desperately tries to be SO mysterious, SO ambitious and SO convoluted that, when the climax eventually approaches and the time has arrived to finally come up with some adequate explanations, the script can't possibly provide any more surprise twists or revelations that are strong enough to live up to the expectations that got built up. "Shallow Ground" isn't too bad, but it tries to be too much. The construction of a nearby dam has finished since a few weeks now, and almost the entire town of Shallow something is preparing to move out and start a new life elsewhere. The local police force as well nearly finished packing up everything in boxes when suddenly a young box walks into the station, entirely covered in blood. The kid won't stop bleeding the blood of at least three different dead persons; his fingerprints match those of multiple missing persons and he inconspicuously covers the walls with macabre messages like "No One Leaves". He appears to be a supernatural entity, the hybrid of several restless souls and unsolved murder cases that combined their strength to return from the dead and help the local authorities solving the mystery. Okay, so we've got a fairly original premise, a thoroughly moody atmosphere and literally gallons worth of blood (though very little on screen massacres). Then what went wrong and why isn't "Shallow Ground" ranked among the finest hidden horror gems of recent years? Well, partly because it was poorly promoted upon its release, but mostly because the film is incoherent as hell and ultimately fails to deliver. Besides, the basic plot outline may sound potentially fascinating but the story loses at lot of its impact very fast. "Shallow Ground" halfway suddenly swifts from being a supernatural mystery to an ordinary serial killer movie, and not exactly a very plausible or original one, I may add. Also, it's never good for a horror film to raise more questions than it can answer. But there are several positive remarks to make as well. "Shallow Ground" is a low-budget film, but it's nicely photographed and benefits from great make-up effects as well as competent acting performances.

Sheldon Wilson's stark supernatural low budget horror film is too contrived, hard to follow and before it is over it becomes a head-scratcher...why does anyone watch this all the way through. Some pretty gory scenes, but that is about it. Out of the woods stumbles a naked teenage boy covered in blood, carrying the very same hunting knife that was used in a brutal murder twelve months earlier. Small town sheriff Jack Sheppard(Timothy V. Murphy)obligates himself to deal with his own demons and dark past and the slaying he failed to stop. Supernatural, horror and bunk; the story line is just not very smart. The cast includes: Stan Kirsch, Patty McCormack, Natallie Avital and Rocky Marquette.

While preparing to shutdown a sheriff's station in the woods, the deputies Stuart Dempsey (Stan Kirsch) and Laura Russell (Lindsey Stoddart) are surprised by a naked teenager covered in blood and with a hunt knife in his hand. The boy is arrested and Sheriff Jack Sheppard (Timothy V. Murphy) is summoned by his assistant. While investigating the identity of the boy, Jack hopes to solve the disappearance of many people in the area, including his girlfriend. When the identity of the boy is disclosed, the mystery increases.The beginning of "Shallow Ground" is promising and intriguing, and I recalled the "X-Files" series. Unfortunately, in a certain moment, it seems that director and writer Sheldon Wilson lost the control of his creation and the story goes nowhere, becoming very confused and having an unsatisfactory and disappointing resolution. In the end, there are three plots: the lead one, about the old lady that lost her husband and daughter in the dam, blames everybody and "builds" a new family of her own: the secondary one is about the torment sheriff , that suffers for not having saved the blond girl. The third one is about a drug dealer that was executed in the city. For some unexplained reason, the dead seek revenge, and all the people killed in the woods somehow combines in one gore being. The same happens with the drug dealer. But why so much complication, wouldn't it be easier if the boy had gone directly to the killer's house and stop her crimes the same way the dealer did with the officer that shot him? The last scene is simply an awful hook for a possible sequel. My vote is six.Title (Brazil): "Terra Rasa" ("Shallow Ground")

I'm a horror fan from way back, and am always looking for interesting twists on the genre. There's really only so much you can do with blood and guts and creepy guys in the woods, so the audience gets bored quickly. I doubt the slasher genre will ever really go away, because people who've been long-term fans grow up and start making their own movies, but they're conscious that there's a blase fan base and a long history preceding them.So we get movies like this one. I think it probably made more sense in the writer/director's head, although you catch on pretty quickly through its (unfortunately) fairly standard suspense setups and "No, it was Jason's MOTHER" type twists. Even the twists are getting predictable. ---------spoiler below----------- ---------stop reading if you don't want a spoiler--------------------What was interesting about this movie was the idea not that the dead are getting up and looking for justice, but the idea of who's responsible for the deaths in the first place, since the main targets are people in authority. It examines an interesting question of who's really responsible for a tragedy, which is why I liked it, outside of the usual gore and guts movies. And the end was cool. :)