Written and Directed by Matthew Leutwyler, 2007

There is nothing worse than a creature feature unfit to even be considered a Sci-Fi channel original film.  Or so I thought right up to 93 minutes ago, when I elected to watch UNEARTHED on FearNET HD On-Demand.  Turns out the pain from said creature feature stings all the more when it is the sophomore film from Matthew Leutwyler, the man responsible for DEAD & BREAKFAST, the premiere independent horror-comedy hybrid since EVIL DEAD II.

UNEARTHED is dreadful.  Dreadful, dreadful, dreadful.  Lest you think this is merely a let down because I hold DEAD & BREAKFAST so high, I assure you it is not.  UNEARTHED is irredeemable by anyone’s standards.  The Leutwyler authorship is merely dirt kicked in the face.

Cut to the shitty chase.  Strangers converge at a gas station in an almost non-existant town, trapped there by a mutual need for gas that is never going to come because the truck hauling it “exploded” (the script’s words; sure doesn’t look it) after swerving to miss a recently…wait for it…unearthed creature.  This creature is straight out of a time vortex anchored in the film stock of 1992’s ALIEN 3.  I talk not only of its design, which is a blatant adolescent xenomorph, but that the film’s heinous CGI is identical to that of Fincher’s in ALIEN 3, which for anyone who has seen it in the last, oh, 18 years knows has not aged well.  Not, at, all.