Ben Wheatley at the BFI London Film Festival in London, in 2018.
Written and directed by Ben Wheatley, In the Earth is a return to the filmmaker’s low budget and challenging creative roots.
The horror, born out of the global pandemic, is set during a search for a cure to a devastating virus. It follows a scientist and park scout who find themselves stuck in a nightmarish reality after they venture into woodland that holds a darkness that appears to be coming to life around them.
I caught up with Wheatley to discuss the indie’s evolution, what it has in common with John Carpenter’s Halloween, and the pros and cons of In the Earth premiering at a digital Sundance festival.
Simon Thompson: In the Earth is a return to back to basics, low budget filmmaking. Does a leaner budget keep your filmmaking skills tuned up?
Ben Wheatley: I’ve always thought that filmmaking is a muscle. You’ve got to keep working it. It hurts you not to be making stuff, and so, when I have time, that’s why I do a lot of TV too, given the chance. In the Earth is definitely a conversation with some of my other movies, certainly with Kill List and A Field in England. There are also influences from British horror. On one level, it’s Hansel and Gretel, and then it goes into kind of 70s Doctor Who and Quatermass and all these things. It was interesting when I was making it because I felt like I had some things that I knew I was referencing and other things I didn’t realize until I was shooting. For instance, Hayley Squires’ accent in this, I was like,’ Oh, my God, this is straight out of a Hammer film. Fantastic.’ So there were little surprises in there, even for me.
Thompson: In the Earth feels original, but I did get a sense of several of the influences.
Wheatley: I don’t think I ever go there with a checklist of stuff. It’s more of having a feeling of those things and a dialogue between myself and my memories. That can be things that scared me when I was a kid from media but also stuff from reality that has scared me. Those things intermingle. I’ve got really strong memories of watching Tom Baker era Doctor Who episodes, which were terrifying, but then walking out of my house into the woods and being actively terrified. It’s those kinds of things. Those scars are just there, and they never really go away.
Thompson: You say In the Earth is part of a conversation between your movies. Is this your version of a cinematic universe?
Wheatley: It would be slightly clutching at straws to create a cinematic universe purely out of people being terrified. I don’t think of them as interconnected, but they’re more like a back and forth in a way. Kill List and Sightseers are the same film effectively but done twice from slightly different perspectives, and In the Earth might be my trying to understand A Field in England a bit more. It’s that conversation between the two films that is going on. There are things that are the same, but there is also a discussion carried on, or rifted on, over the top.
There is something dark in the forest in the 70s genre movie infused horror, 'In the Earth.'
Thompson: Was In the Earth an idea you had for a while or something that was brand new?
Wheatley: This was brand new. It started in lockdown partially as part of me trying to get my head together, understand what was going on, and also trying to look busy. Also, I found that I didn’t want to watch any films at that time. I didn’t want to look at anybody else’s stuff, so I ended up writing and wrote three or four scripts so that I could see those films. I literally wrote what I wanted to watch. I wanted to see that film. With this one, I talked to our producer, Andy Starke, as we started cooking up this idea that we should actually shoot it. There was a point where it looked like the pandemic, the first wave, would dip, and then there’d be a period where everyone would scramble around, and production would start again. Amongst that there’s a chance to make a film because everyone would be available.
Thompson: Because this was another low-budget film for you, was it also a quick one to turn around?
Wheatley: From script to having the finished movie available was about a year. I was still writing it right up until we were shooting it, and the shoot was 15 days, which was quite long for us. My first film, Down Terrace, was eight days and A Field in England was 11 days, and Happy New Year, Colin Burstead was 12. 15 days is what you would expect from a 70s genre movie. We found schedules for the original Halloween, and they were about the same amount of time and budget.
Thompson: Did you have funding in place, or did you just go out and do it?
Wheatley: I’ve always had this kind of kamikaze thing where if we’ve got some money, then we’ll use that. We had a tiny bit of money, so we were just going to make it whatever, but then we talked to the guys at Neon. We’ve known them for ten years, so they were there right at the beginning with us and picked up Down Terrace at Fantastic Fest. Many of the guys there had also worked on A Field in England, so there was an instant fit. I don’t think there’s any other way we could have done it. It wouldn’t have worked if there was a traditional development cycle or if we’d have written it and then gone to various studios. You needed people who knew exactly who we were, knew us personally and trusted us. They could have lost the whole budget straight away. We had public liability insurance, but there’s no insurance that would cover the budget if it went down. That was an amazing leap of faith.
Joel Fry (left) and Ellora Torchia (right) in 'In the Earth.'
Thompson: The pandemic has kept people at home, and many of us have been experimenting more with what we watch. Horror is one of the genres that seems to have had an uptick.
Wheatley: Horror itself has always been pretty adventurous, and as a genre and a fan base of people, it’s very broad. I think that is a very fertile ground, and that’s why people often go to horror in that space. Whether or not people understand horror when they make it is something else, or whether they even like it to start with. I think you have to love it, and you have to love all genres to make successful horror otherwise, it stands out a mile. From my experience, trawling through Prime Video and Netflix, there is all sorts of crazy stuff on there. Prime is full of Giallo at the moment, for some reason. There is tons of it. I watched a load of horror stuff I hadn’t seen in donkey’s years, from when I was a teenager. It’s a good time for the inquisitive, that’s for sure.
Thompson: In the Earth debuted at Sundance earlier this year, which took place digitally for the first time. How was that for you?
Wheatley: It was frustrating because In the Earth is the first film I’ve had as a movie premiere that I didn’t go to. I didn’t sit with an audience and hear their reaction. It’s a film that needs to be seen in the cinema and with an audience. However, on the other hand, no COVID, no film, so you can’t really complain. The fact that it showed at Sundance was amazing. That whole thing where people could have access to these movies all over America was pretty amazing. Suddenly, the screens went from 300 to 2,000. Every screen was 2,000 people.
Thompson: Would you like to see this format continue alongside an in-person event in the future?
Wheatley: The digital screenings for the festivals are more, in a way, the filmmakers helping out the festivals, because if you show your film to multiple 2000 people screenings, it can be an issue, certainly on a movie that’s a bit more niche. You could end up blowing your film out where it’s seen by everybody that really wants to see it before it has its proper release. Kill List went to 60 festivals, but they were each only 200 seat screenings. It builds and builds of the back of things like that. If you start showing your movie to 100,000 people across America on virtual screens, you might find that was the whole audience, and you won’t make any money.
Thompson: Finally, you mentioned Kill List earlier. It celebrates its tenth anniversary this year. Do you have any plans to mark the occasion?
Wheatley: I’ve blown the 10th anniversary of Down Terrace. These films that are reaching that milestone are one after the other. Next year is the tenth anniversary of Sightseers. We’re supposed to be putting something together for it, but we haven’t yet because we’re all a bit slow. Maybe we’ll just hold out for the 20th anniversary or something.
In the Earth lands in theaters on Friday, April 16, 2021.
