The Burrowers (2008)
"You killed the buffalo, so the burrowers found other food."
I’ll be damned. A Western-set, direct-to-DVD, creature-feature that’s actually good. Excuse me while I look out my window for flying pigs. The Burrowers is what Tremors 4: The Legend Begins should have been: scary, atmospheric, and minus the bouncing baby Graboids.
I was not expecting anything memorable when I played The Burrowers late one night out of boredom and restlessness. It kicked my ass. I mean, I’m watching the first scene and thinking: this is actually pretty scary, this is an effective sequence. Of course there are more horror films than I can count that begin with an excellent opener or setup, but fall to pieces once the main characters are introduced with their cardboard acting and lame script. Astonishingly, that never happened. The suspense and mystery was unleashed carefully and discretely, not giving away too much too soon, and the characters were impressively interesting. Now the writing won’t win any awards, but it is no worse than most of the garbage out in theaters right now. Everything else, the acting, direction, setting, and special effects, is strong enough to carry the film far above its limitations. So why, you may ask, did this great genre film not hit theaters? Well, there are a few simple answers. Relatively unknown actors, unknown director, low-budget, and, oh, did I mention this was a horror/western. Yeah, I gather there’s not much of a market for these babies.
Me, I love Westerns. I love Horror films. So the genre combination by itself makes the movie more appealing to me. The film stars William Mapother (Ethan from “Lost”), Clancy Brown (the preacher from “Carnivàle”), and Doug Hutchison (Horace from “Lost”). I’ve always enjoyed William Mapother’s Ethan in "Lost". I think he is really creepy and underused. What I couldn’t predict, was that by putting a mustache on him, you could make him look like a real cowboy. He plays Will Parcher, an experienced Indian tracker who leads a recue party to look for a bunch of missing women. Mapother is really very charismatic, and makes for a surprisingly compelling and confident leading man. Clancy Brown, who is never not great, gets another role where he’s not playing a jail guard: always a plus. He plays John Clay, the wise, older figure, whose advice everybody should have started listening to earlier than they did. And finally, Doug Hutchison plays Henry Victor, the leader of a small army regiment that briefly crosses paths with the rescue party. Hutchison’s role would normally be played statically - the one-note, archetypal, power-hungry villain - but Hutchison has so much fun with it that the role manages to stand out as something special. Hutchison stole the show in last year’s Punisher: Warzone. He has a talent for acting with his whole face, and his eyes can convey great oceans of madness. He clearly had a lot of fun with Henry Victor, despite the brevity of his appearance in the film.
The director, J. T. Petty, has obviously watched both Jaws and Alien. He understands that his creature is far more effective, especially with his limited budget, when remaining unseen for the majority of the film. Much like the aforementioned films, The Burrowers takes its time to build its simple story, gorgeous setting, and remarkable characters. You get the obligatory hints that something is very, very wrong. There are many truly frightening scenes during the first half, and they are made more frightening because you truly don’t know what the characters are dealing with. You get bizarre glimpses of things you can’t quite make out or explain. The mystery is so effectively kept that you will find yourself engaged in the movie predicated upon curiosity alone.
The premise may sound a lot like Tremors, but the movies share little in common. The plot itself comes with some great twists that you won’t see coming. At its heart, The Burrowers is a real character piece. The leads are all well-developed and their journeys feel genuine. You do care about these people, which is a serious compliment given the film’s generic residency. To top it all off is a shocking and gutsy ending that gives the rest of the film a lot more weight and sentiment. It could have ended with your typical horror-movie last-stand against the offensive creature, but instead the filmmakers chose to make a point. For that, I give them a great deal of respect for challenging me in a movie that didn’t have to have such substance.
It wasn’t all perfect. As I alluded to earlier, the dialogue is sometimes a little flat, but the actors still manage to have fun with it. The film is also fairly rough in its treatment of Native Americans. I understand that there is always a fine line between Western films being historically accurate and excessively offensive. It wasn’t so much the way that the characters of The Burrowers treated the Indians that bothered me (although this is a serious contention), so much as it was the way that the Indians were depicted. Their depiction was derogatory, complete with phony high-pitched yells and a conveniently profound understanding of the natural world. In the end, it wasn’t a big deal, and I didn’t feel as dirty as I did after watching Crank High Voltage.
I recommend this film as one of the finest its sub-genre has to offer; it’s certainly the best creature movie I have seen in years. The final verdict: finally a Western-themed horror film that delivers the goods even without the help of Michael Gross.
Professor P
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