The first trailer of In the Earth is here to give us a taste of Free Fire and High-Rise filmmaker Ben Wheatley’s pandemic-inspired horror movie. The trailer follows a new set of posters that presents the film’s cast in a really sinister way.
The trailer opens up with a peaceful image of a forest before we get introduced to the plot of the movie. The world faces a pandemic, which can be seen by people wearing facemasks right at the beginning of the trailer. In this context, scient Martin Lowery (Joel Fry) gets sent into the woods with parc scout Alma (Ellora Torchia), to look for some missing people. It doesn’t take long for them to start being haunted by a spirit of the woods, which drains their sanity little by little as its presence is revealed. The trailer gives us some The Blair Witch vibes, and the evil force lurking in the woods brings The Ritual to our minds. Both great sources of inspiration for In the Earth.
The new set of posters show cast members against a black background, with their eyes cut out to let us see the white of the paper. Each poster also features an unnerving element over the close-up face of the cast. Fry has spider-web glued to his mouth, Torchia (Midsommar) has a tree branch crawling up her nose, Hayley Squires (I, Daniel Blake) has worms between her open lips, and, finally, Reece Shearsmith has a big cut on his forehead, with blood dripping on his skin. It couldn’t be more obvious that nature is the enemy of Wheatley’s movie, which makes a lot of sense, given the context of its production.
In the Earth was written and directed by Wheatley in secret during the pandemic, and directly inspired by the confinement rules that took place in the UK. Wheatley’s goal, according to the moviemaker himself, was to create a movie that could talk about the moment we are living, with the pandemic and the destructive force of nature serving as our main reason to fear going outside our homes. If the trailer and posters are good examples of what we can expect when the movie releases, we can already be sure Wheatley did a damn good job.
In the Earth will be released in theaters on April 30. Until then, we’ll only have nightmares about the real pandemic outside our windows. You can see the In the Earth trailer below, followed by some creepy posters that first debuted on Bloody Disgusting.
