#67: The Burrowers

The Burrowers

J. T. Petty
Initial release: September 21, 2008 (USA)

The old American west is a ripe setting for horror: the isolation, the constant threat of violence, and the vast, empty frontier, full of ghost towns and more secret things. There's a million ways you could tell a good horror story in this setting; unfortunately, The Burrowers, a horror western outing by J.T. Petty (who mostly writes video games, including the Outlast games) just really fails to do anything interesting. While it's technically competent, it’s just another monster movie that can't and won't do anything special. Even the commentary on white settlers’ perceptions of Native Americans and black people can’t elevate it.

It’s 1879 in the Dakota territories. A wholesome white family is dragged off in the night. Believing them victims of hostile Native Americans, a posse is formed with the US cavalry leading the charge, alongside a young Irish immigrant betrothed to one of the missing women. The commander of the cavalry unit is a creepy, disturbing asshole with a Snidely Whiplash mustache who enjoys tormenting the local tribes, and so our Irish hero and some others end up going off on their own. It soon becomes apparent that something unusual and sinister is afoot.

Eventually they find a lone Native woman whose husband was killed by “burrowers” — weird, seemingly subhuman monsters with legs like a grasshopper’s — who only come out at night, poison their prey and bury it alive, coming back later to eat the softened food. They’re not just doing it willy-nilly either — with all the buffalo killed off, the things are after the second-next readily available source of food: humans. And they really don’t care what color the food is either. Anyway so a lot of bad things happen and even though the Ute tribes have experience fighting the things, it doesn’t really seem to matter when the cavalry just decimates them offscreen. In the end, we’re left wondering who are the real monsters. (Again: it’s humans, a theme so common it's barely worth pointing out.)

There’s worse movies, to be fair. It’s competently directed and decently acted (though only Clancy Brown really distinguishes himself,) but the pacing seems to lurch a little and the ending feels like it’s missing a scene or two. The soundtrack is mostly forgettable. And while the monsters themselves have better CGI than, say, Dead Birds, that’s not saying much. They’re mostly ugly and featureless, and are honestly kind of generically ridiculous looking. I honestly was expecting, and would’ve preferred, worm people or something.

All in all, it’s an okay 90 minutes but it tries too hard to be grindhouse when there’s the germ of a more substantial film in there that simply isn’t developed very well.

-june❤