The Deeper You Dig (2019) - Movie Review
What do you get when you take a no-name cast add a group of nobody filmmakers and an insanely complex art-house script?
An utter shock to the system movie, that’s what.
Let’s Discuss…
This film was requested via Instagram by a buddy of the site, Rhett. I went in completely blind. I did a cursory look online to see what the overall opinions were, attempting to avoid any spoilers. To say the film was divisive upon release would be a gross understatement. This seems to be a movie you either love or hate. It has an overall Metacritic score of 75, but it’s one of those movies that gets to that point with a lot of 1 star and 5 star reviews.
And after finishing the film, and read some of these reviews—I have to say… I agree.
The film’s trailers pitch it as something akin to 1999’s Stir of Echoes, but it’s much closer to 1973’s Holy Mountain.
If you know, you know and if you don’t—I’ll explain as we continue through the review.
Let’s start with the be basics.
The Deeper You Dig is a 2019 horror / thriller brought to us by the Adams family. Who’s that?, you may ask—and don’t worry, I did too. The Adams family is a film collective made up of Actor/Writer/Director/Sound Designer John Adams, his wife—Actor/Producer/Director/Writer Toby Poser and their daughter—Actor/Director Zelda Adams. They are like the Partridge Family of horror movies.
The film focuses on small town huckster/psychic Ivy as she searches for her missing daughter in the snow covered mountains of upstate New York. When the police prove useless in their hunt for her daughter, she turns to the dark side for help. Calling in favors from the very real psychic community of which she was once a part, she peers beyond the veil, but unfortunately for her there’s a grave cost. With her suspicions focused on her strange new neighbor, Kurt, she tries to come to grips with the visions and torments sent from beyond. As the fingers of madness sink deeper into her soul—one question plagues her. Will she find her daughter or lose herself?
Sorry for the lackluster synopsis.
I really don’t want to spoil anything inadvertently.
I’ll do that in the section below.
Let me just say that this film is quietly intense. It’s on the same level as recent great Art House films like My Heart Won’t Beat Unless You Tell It To, The Eyes of My Mother, A Girl Walks Home At Night and The Witch. It’s the rare air of horror where believability is key.
The fact that the practical events of this film happen everyday is the true terror here. The loss of a child, the loss of innocence, and the loss of self are all at play here. These characters are all real people. Their interactions are awkward, but entirely organic. The performances of the Adams family overall are incredible with the performance of Toby Poser being the breakout performance.
Toby brings this powerful intensity to the role. Given, she’s acting alongside her loved ones, so the loss imagined is even more real—but a lesser actor would have dipped a toe into melodrama, but she doesn’t. Her portrayal of a mother scorned by her faith is powerful.
On the production side of things, I was extremely impressed. The film looks far more expensive than its budget.
The special effects in the film are overall done in camera, but there are a few CGI moments which are subtle enough—but still the low point of the film.
The sound design and soundtrack more than make-up for the CGI. There is a lot of stark, harsh silence in the film which makes the moments of violent cacophony later on all the more jarring. The sound is a character all it’s own as the spirits whisper and the houses creak.
The script has a refreshing amount of world building without piling on the exposition. There is no exposition in this film. To find answers, you have to seek them. The answers are all in there, but you have to pay attention.
Needless to say, I’d recommend this movie. You may not like it, but you should still experience it.
Now, I can’t go any farther without—SPOOOOOOOOOOOILEEEEERRRRRRRRSSSSSSSSSSS
On the plus side, there’s no exposition in this film.
On the down side, there’s no exposition in this film.
There is a lot of occult and spiritualistic imagery in the film. As someone who often studies things like Tarot, Demonology, and occult symbolism as part of their daily life—it was old hat to me.
but I’m a weirdo.
Most people won’t have this background to explain the themes of the film, but I don’t think this is necessarily a negative—but it could lead to confusion if you miss key moments.
The main confusions would be the ending.
In the climax of the film, Ivy appears to have killed Kurt and yet he’s drinking cocoa with her right after.
To explain this, we have to start at the beginning. Kurt murders Echo and as he proceeds with his cover-up, he becomes more and more unstable. He begins to see her and speak to her. At first this is viewed as his individual madness, but then Ivy begins to see her as well.
Why is this?
Well, it’s because Echo hasn’t left our plane of existence. She’s haunting Kurt. Using knowledge her mother taught her, she’s held on to give her mother a chance at saving her soul—which Ivy does when she shoots Kurt. In some way, Kurt wanted to die. Whether it was due to the guilt of killing Echo or guilt from his sins previous—when the bullet passes into his eye he releases control of his self and Echo possesses his flesh. The person at the table at the end is in fact echo.
This was obviously inspired by the incorrect film stereotypes surrounding hoodoo body swap magic Ala films like The Skeleton Key, Vice Versa, and Freaky Friday, but to this film’s credit—they don’t mislabel the magic as either voodoo or hoodoo. They leave it vague and it works.
They also utilize the idea of the Loa, which is the spirits of nature that possess human beings in Voodoo and Hoodoo. When Ivy is having to swallow the snake / eel in order to continue her spiritual journey. To me, this felt like a reference to the idea of Damballa, the snake loa. Damballa is often depicted going from land to water, much like Ivy finds herself blacking out on land and waking up in water after her visions. Damballa is also known as a bringer of life and creator of all things which plays into the idea of Ivy as a mother who gave life to Echo in her womb, but also gave her new life in the killing of Kurt.
It’s an interesting, intense film.
Check it out streaming free on Amazon Prime Video.