Burying
a body is a lot like cat-sitting or implementing wage and price controls. It
sounds easy, but it always turns out to be messier and more destructive than
you expected. Kurt Miller is about to learn that lesson the super hard way when
an accident leads to murder and a subsequent haunting in the Adams Filmmaking Family (John
Adams, Toby Poser, and their daughter Zelda Adams)’s The Deeper You Dig,
which screens during this year’s FrightFest in the UK.
Echo
Allen is a goth kid and an accomplished deer hunter. Her mother Ivy was a
natural psychic. They would be quite the formidable horror movie duo, if it
were not for the crisis of faith Ivy suffered several years ago. Lately, she
has been faking readings for money, at the risk of generating bad karma for
herself. Regardless, she still senses the physical and metaphysical peril that
befalls Echo.
Tragically,
a somewhat inebriated Miller ran down Echo while she was walking by the side of
the road late at night. Instead of rushing her to the hospital, he finishes her
off, with the intention of covering-up the incident. Yet, despite burying her
body in the woods, Echo’s spirit starts haunting him and also reaching out to
her formerly sensitive mother. Although not certain of Miller’s guilt, Allen finds
pretexts for visiting the ramshackle farmhouse he is trying to fix up and flip,
sort of like a maternal Columbo.
Deeper
is
about as DIY as you can get, but that rather suits this austere tale of existential
guilt and supernatural dread. It shares the sensibilities of Dostoyevsky and
Poe, but its heart and soul is buried in the backwoods hill country, where
Americana is at its weirdest. The Adams-Posers are addressing some big themes,
but they have crafted an intensely intimidate morality play. They also come up
with some fresh and original ways to use Tarot cards.
John
Adams (not the classical-minimalist composer, but he did write the film’s
score) is riveting as Miller. He smoothly shifts from sinister to a guilt-wracked
basket case from scene to scene. As thesp and co-writer-co-director, he makes
Miller one of the most complex and fully developed genre bad guys in recent
memory. Zelda Adams has a blast chewing the scenery as the spectral Echo, but
she also develops enough chemistry with her mom, aptly playing her mom, to make
their psychic link believable. Shawn Wilson also adds some memorable flair and
heavy attitude as Ivy Allen’s psychic protégé, Del, in a pivotal scene.
This
is our kind of independent filmmaking, because it is genuinely independent and
refreshingly inventive. There is plenty of woo-woo creepiness, but it is firmly
grounded in the Catskills region—so much so, you can practically feel the soil
under your nails. Very highly recommended, The Deeper You Dig screens
tomorrow (8/23), at this year’s FrightFest in the UK.
