Disturbing.
It is true that there are many issues in Shallow Ground that hamper its performance as a masterpiece and keep it from reaching classic status. The acting, for example, was far from excellent, there are too many easily perceived goofs and the characters fail to make any impression other than that of their physical presence on set and even that can almost be disregarded, at times.
Yet, there is a very fortunate combination of factors that rise this movie above the average, uninspired product with little or no value. First of all, the scenery. Not only are the woods chosen a very strong visual setting in which to unroll a horror story as it was explored almost to the fullest. Instead of the typical dark-hued and mostly shady forest environment for which most of these movies would go for, Shallow Ground opts to shoot sun dappled clearings and light flooded groves. And this green preponderance is shockingly effective when it becomes the background for the blood soaked boy whose silent performance may very be one of the most uncanny characters ever to haunt a horror movie.
Which is another strong feature in this movie, perhaps the most original one, the nameless creation whose identity is a mystery and whose purpose is never fully explained. Although many will claim this is a fault in the script, that plot-wise it is a muddle of never fully developed ideas, in a way that is exactly its allure. A horror movie must leave something to the imagination, there is not need to skin down motives and expose a very well define system of motivations for it to work as a nightmarish concoction of the not necessarily logic.
Although it does remind one of an X Files Episode, the gruesome and very often blood spattered approach that permeates the whole movie set it a few rungs above the toned down horror of our days.
At least, Shallow Ground is not afraid to be a pure horror movie, one that accepts the rules of the genre only to introduce fresh variations within a tradition that seemed to be dying off. Shallow Ground may the first movie of the 2000's to follow the Texas Chainsaw legacy.
And that is praise worthy.
