The only thing you can say on behalf of In the land is that it is almost certainly the first dramatic feature to emerge from the Covid era that is explicitly about the global plague that marginalized and fragmented international cinema – not to mention the world in general – as we always know it. In addition, British Wheatley and terrorist expert Ben Wheatley’s little quickie is a tedious hike in the forest, a monotonous affair with boring characters and a succession of unpleasant injuries. Imagination and surprise are lacking. Neon is handling distribution in the United States after the film’s Sundance premiere on Sunday night in the festival’s premier section.
Filmed for 15 days last August in a forest between London and Oxford, this obvious low-budget man represents Wheatley in a dirty recovery after his fantasy and totally useless Rebecca remake starring Lily James and Armie Hammer. But as invigorating as it may have been to quickly create a story of urgent survival linked to the same dangers that everyone on Earth must face daily, the imagination is very limited here in a story fueled by fabricated threats and totally arbitrary violence.
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“We’ve been down for almost a year,” someone mentions, as Wheatley directly connects the middle of the film to the here and now, not that watching a dark film about an insidious virus that requires careful isolation from other people can be classified as the anyone’s idea of fun at the moment.
But Wheatley goes ahead anyway, sending the unattractive Dr. Martin Lowry (Joel Fry) on a two-day trek through the jungle with Alma Park’s guide (Reece Shearsmith) to visit a remote research test site. It didn’t seem that bumping into other people, let alone infected ones, would cause great concern in this immense unpopulated area, raising concerns that the film could be as boring as living under Covid. Martin’s minimal way with words does little to alleviate those fears.
With Wheatley in charge, however, you can be sure that it won’t be long before a weirdo, madman or madman breaks free to start some chaos. Certainly, at dusk, the boring couple, without knowing it, enter the wooded lair of Zack (Haley Squires), a visibly unusual type that occupies a large complex of several tents full of welcome goods (food, dry shoes , a photo lab) and sinister (blades to cut Martin’s infected fingers). This is a guy who’s been in the forest for a long time.
Given Zack’s inclinations and Martin’s vulnerability, there’s more confusion as to where it came from, but it doesn’t take long for the film to delve into mushy mystical territory with a naturalist’s conversation about his belief that the forest can communicate directly with humans. It would help if Martin had a sharper advantage in providing good rebuttal to such a gobbledygook and giving and receiving more excitement; an accidental three-minute encounter with the remaining Monty Python crew, lost in the forest itself, would have been most welcome. But the character as it is written is boring, without interesting conversation or opinion. Women at least have some courage and points of view.
Horrormeister that it is, Wheatley reliably provides some nasty moments and some nasty and bloody scenes with pliers, but not enough to attract the most radical fans of fear and blood. If only Covid herself could be here and go as fast as the movie.