Unearthed (After Dark Horrorfest 2007 Review)

Plot
An unknown creature terrorizes an archeological dig in the middle of a desolate New Mexico town. Can the town drunk/sheriff rise to the occasion and shield the survivors?

Jason's Thoughts
I had a feeling that there had to be a few bad movies in this series of 8 Films to Die For and I finally hit upon one.  Unearthed had a really cheesy plot that borrowed heavily from other great films and almost came across as a made-for-cable movie as the acting and script were pretty terrible.

Now when I saw that it borrowed for other great films, I am talking about the likes of Alien, Feast, and The Hills Have Eyes.  Unearthed takes place in the dessert southwest where an unknown creature - that resembles the iconic alien from Alien - roams around, killing the population of a small community.  The female sheriff, who is also the town drunk, and a few stranded strangers band together to try to survive and fight off the creature.

Aside from incorporating and mixing all of these different movies together, there really wasn't much to the plot of Unearthed.  There could have been more to the plot, but lighting was sparse so it was pretty much hard to see anything going on during most of the movie.  All that could be seen for the most part was shadows moving around.

In the rare instances when lighting was used, it showed off their poor CGI of the creature's choppy movement or to rip off the famous scene in Alien 3 where the alien stares down Ripley, however, instead of Sigourney Weaver, it was the drunken sheriff.  

The real bad part of Unearthed, though, is that it was written and directed by a person I am familiar with, Matthew Leutwyler.  He also wrote and directed Dead and Breakfast which I thought was a really good horror/comedy film.  Unfortunately Leutwyler didn't achieve the same success of his previous effort with Unearthed.

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