I wasn’t going to write a little review about this movie.
However, it’s been a hectic week and I didn’t have the energy to put too much effort into anything but reviews are quick to do, especially while still fresh in the mind. Today’s review is a film that is available on Shudder, and beware of spoilers of a mockumentary film directed by Adam Green called…
Digging Up the Marrow, I added the film to my watchlist based off of the summary and eventually came around to watching it. It feels like a mixture of documentary and a film in one which when done right, is pretty fun. The film follows director Adam Green, playing himself, getting into contact with someone (Ray Wise as Dekker), claiming he knows that monsters exist and that he knows where they are.
The film takes on this role of how far are you willing to go to prove or disprove such a thing, putting your reputation and work on the line for a stranger and the consequences of these actions. What I enjoyed is the slow rabbit hole that Adam and his cameraman are taken through and how they find it amusing, they are just humoring themselves and Dekker (Wise) until things get too real in the end… 20-30 minutes of the film.
Until then, I was all into this movie. I liked the idea of monsters being real. The story reminded me of the urban legend called Melon Heads, aka misfigured children living out in the woods and I can see the influence there. The drawings of said monsters are really cool (done by Alex Pardee) and I wish we could have seen more of these drawings. If Dekker drew these, he must have MANY more after watching them, right? I liked that we also see other prominent horror icons and faces (Mick Garris, Tom Holland, Kane Hodder) featured throughout the film playing themselves and I just get a kick out of it.
Now, the last 20-30 minutes is where I have a problem or two. There are so many unanswered questions, maybe on purpose, that… I can’t get past. Spoiler alert for those who have not seen this.
First, Dekker definitely had a shady past. However, I do believe he had a son but how the son truth bomb was dropped and then never resolved left an empty space in the film. Second, when Dekker “disappears” after the huge confrontation of monsters at the Marrow, we find out no one lived in the “house” which says, okay, he was a squatter. But not alone, he definitely had something chained up in the house with him. Was it a monster? If so, which one? There are two guesses online: one was his son, which doesn’t make sense if his son was “missing” and he was “trying to keep up” with his son who might be a monster so then that leads us to the other option: Brella. There are also rumors of perhaps Dekker kept Brella chained up and she is the mother to his son which… that is a WHOLE OTHER MOVIE.
How did Dekker get captured? Was it planned out that the monsters would get him? Why attack Green in his home? How did the monster know where he lived AND get into his house? Did Dekker reveal where Green lived? Were they being watched all along? Why not go after the cameraman, too? He was there as well. What other monsters exist? I wanted MORE monsters, I wanted MORE lore about them and the film ends on a bleak note of unanswered questions and concerns.
Digging Up the Marrow is a fun little film. I might be reading too deep into it but I’m a detail oriented person, I was gonna have questions no matter what! It’s got some cool special effects, some humor, you see the chaotic energy of Dekker being passed on to Green and the cameraman, it’s contagious and the descent of craziness is apparent from the jump.
Digging Up the Marrow stars Adam Green, Ray Wise, William Barratt, Alex Pardee and Rileah Vanderbilt.
It gets 3 out of 5.
Shots of Horror 