- A fracking horror story, "Unearth" follows two neighboring farm families whose relationships are strained when one of them chooses to lease their land to an oil and gas company. In the midst of growing tension, the land is drilled, and something long dormant and terrifying, deep beneath the earth's surface is released. "Unearth" is about the horrifying repercussions sown by shortsighted decisions, and what our children reap from our actions.—Gregg Brilliant
- For some insight into a real-world "mind controlling" parasitical fungus with propagation similar to this movie, check out the "Cordyceps Fungus" (also called the 'Zombie Ant' fungus. Search also various YouTube/rumble videos) It's found worldwide, and prefers warm, humid locations like tropical rain forests. It can infect and destroy entire ant colonies and infects other species as well. It can significantly impact an ecosystem. The fungus embeds itself into the ant and then chemically controls and forces the ant to seek out and settle in an ideal location. It then makes the ant use its jaws to permanently clamp onto a leaf or other material until the fungus grows out from inside the ant into the air and spreads itself from "pods" like in the movie. It often forces the ants to locate near existing ant habitats so that it can infect more ants in a vicious cycle of infection and propagation.—TX-AVjack
- In rural Pennsylvania, two farming families - the Lomacks (father George, daughters, Heather and Kim and grandson Reece, Kim's infant son), and the Dolans (Kathryn, Tom and daughter Christina) - maintain a long-running feud. Both families have fallen on desperate times financially, exacerbating the situation. George Lomack, a single father operating a failing auto repair business, is approached by representatives of Patriot Exploration, a natural gas fracking company with an interest in acquiring drilling rights on his land. Eager to earn money for his two daughters, George accepts the offer. This is to the horror of Dolan matriarch Kathryn, and the tension between the two families escalates further.
Patriot Exploration brings in their equipment and begins operations on the Lomack property, greatly disrupting the lives of the two families. Strange events begin soon thereafter; the members of both families gradually suffer the effects of a strange illness, initially compelling them to obsessively scratch their skin. As their sanity degenerates from the illness, George's infant grandson senses something wrong with the tap water and refuses to drink it, but the others do. Other strange events occur, such as the conspicuous absence of wildlife sounds outside the families' homes.
The illness is the result of a fungus unearthed by the fracking, poisoning the air and water. Kathryn goes missing after working in the barn and suffering from a coughing fit, she crawls through the woods. Christina and Tom Dolan go looking for her and Tom finds her body attached to a tree after the fungus has sprouted tendrils and attached itself to the tree. While Tom looks at her in horror, a sack on a tendril explodes, covering Tom in a substance. Kim finds Reece (George's grandson) in his crib, his body reduced to a gelatinous mass after his skin is digested by the fungus. Kim is shot by Aubrey Dolan (Tom's wife?) under the influence of the fungus. Heather kills Aubrey as she is attacking George. George drives Kim to a neighbors house for help; Heather stays behind. George attacks and presumably kills the neighbor while hallucinating and seeing his own face.
Heather shows up at the Lomack home, while Christina is in the kitchen. Tom shows up and Christina, hallucinating that he has the same tendrils growing from his body and head as Aubrey did, shoots and kills him. Heather and Christina leave and go to the firewatch stand in the woods and pass out. Christina, still hallucinating, thinks Heather has changed and sees blood running down her legs. She makes her way to a car and finds a rifle; firing it in the general direction of the firewatch. After only firing once, the rifle is empty. She then drives into the corn fields before getting the car stuck and passes out. From this point forward, it is hard to tell if the events are really happening or if they are hallucinations as Christina and Heather are in normal clothes with no signs of the fungus infection and carrying on about their day as normal, having taken over the farms as Katheryn mentioned several times.
George and the few survivors return to farming the land. However, the survivors are seen scratching their skin, suggesting they may still be infected. During the end credits, the harvested corn from the Dolan farm travels by truck to an unknown destination in a bayside city. The drone viewpoint also reveals that the watershed from the farms appears to flow in the direction of the bay, leading to the ocean. (thanks to Wikipedia)
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content