Offscreen: film director Ben Wheatley joins the cult with ‘In the Earth’

Even before the pandemic panic is over, extreme weather is now feeding the fear of a climate apocalypse. Offscreen finds this the ideal moment for a film festival dedicated to eco-horror and climate fiction. Ben Wheatley finds this the ideal moment for a pandemic film that culminates in hallucinatory eco-madness.

Last year there was no edition of Offscreen, the film festival best characterised by its slogan: “Join the cult.” This year there is a postponed one. The tormentor, of course, was Covid-19. The festival strikes back by making eco-horror and climate fiction its main theme. A choice made before Walloon villages were washed away, Greece caught fire and Hurricane Ida blew New York and New Orleans into a state of emergency. Movies have been covering the subject for a long time. Just think of Japan's fascination with Godzilla or the chills that Alfred Hitchcock gave you with The Birds. But terrorizing the viewer with cautionary tales of nature taking its revenge on man became hip in the 1970s. Offscreen dusts off a can of “Nature Strikes Back!” and “Animal Attack” films that exorcise the environmental fears of the past into monstrous fauna and flora or hellish natural disasters. Variation is provided by the ecological anime gems by Hayao Miyazaki and Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky's existential masterpiece, which is still being plundered by one director after another.

Ben Wheatley among them. The industrious British director returned to his folk-horror roots after a Netflix-ordered remake of Hitchcock's Rebecca. In the surprisingly strong and inventive In the Earth, a shy scientist, a park ranger and an eccentric who believes in pagan tales join a researcher. The researcher has been swallowed up by an extraordinarily fertile forest with an ecosystem that seems to have no room for mankind. The mind-blowing climax is only one of the reasons why In the Earth is the hit of the festival. Another is that Wheatley is a friend of the house and once presented High-Rise, his film adaptation of a dystopian story by cult author J.G. Ballard, at Offscreen.

In the Earth takes place during a pandemic. But is it also about the pandemic?
Ben Wheatley: In part. I'm weirded out by reviews that explicitly state that In the Earth is set during a pandemic but not during the Covid-19 pandemic. It's the same thing, isn't it?
I often make films that react to what is happening. Only now it's more obvious. With Happy New Year, Colin Burstead (2018) I wanted to talk about the state of Britain with Brexit looming. That was interesting for the British but perhaps less interesting for people who live very far away from us. (Laughs) That does not apply to In the Earth. Everyone is experiencing the misery of the Covid-19 pandemic at the same time. I can't think of another event that so many people experience at once, no matter where in the world they live. This is a unique moment in history.
Normally, there is almost two years between the last day of shooting and the cinema release. You don't notice that unless something earth-shattering happens. But it did happen. All the scenarios I was working on had to be thrown into the bin. I didn't want to pretend there wasn't a pandemic. So during the first lockdown, I started a new scenario from scratch. It is almost your duty as a director or storyteller to respond to your environment with your art.

In the Earth had its world première at a digital edition of the Sundance Festival. A real shame, wasn't it? Don't you think it is a good example of a film that has a lot to gain from the cinematic experience? Offscreen has resolutely chosen not to host digital editions because it believes the cinema experience and coming together are crucial.
Wheatley: A twofold answer. The collective experience has always been an important part of cinema. I partially agree with that idea. I think a more important difference is the experience. In a cinema, the screen is so big, the sound so loud, that the film demands all your attention. You voluntarily choose to surrender to the film. It's a waking dream. At home, the movie competes with all that's happening at the edge of your screen. You pause for a cup of tea or a pee. That's not the same experience at all.
I recently had the great fortune to see Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark and Jaws in a cinema. That was a revelation. I had already seen Jaws about thirty times and still it was as if I really saw that movie for the first time, an incredible experience. I certainly thought Jaws was a fantastic film on television, but it is so much more fantastic in the cinema.

But? You promised a two-pronged response.
Wheatley: We were very sad to see In the Earth make its world premiere online. People didn't experience the film the way we intended. It was brutal bad luck. I think the roof would have been off at a midnight screening at Sundance. But what can I say? The irony is there. Without Covid-19, In the Earth wouldn't even exist. You can't desire everything. The last thing you want is for people to get infected and seriously ill from going to the cinema to see your film.

Offscreen is all about eco-horror and climate fiction. Are you familiar with the “Nature Strikes Back!” and “Animal Attack” movies of the 1970s?
Wheatley: Yeah. But I need to get something off my chest. I saw a poster for In the Earth that said “Nature is evil.” Funny, because that's not what my film is about at all. It's also not like nature strikes back in my movie like it does in the movies you refer to. The moment arises in my film when you can communicate with nature. But the communication is rough. Neither party knows how to speak. In the Earth is more Close Encounters of the Third Kind than a horror film in which nature takes its revenge on man.

You don't want to provide a prophecy of doom?
Wheatley: What makes me optimistic: without humans, nature can fully regenerate itself in just under two hundred thousand years. Except for some pieces of glass, any trace of man would be erased. All the rest will be turned to dust. The oil would be back in underground fields because the trees would be left alone again. It's going to be okay. I prefer that vision of the future to the alarmist “My God, we are destroying the earth.” For ourselves, maybe, but maybe that's the very salvation of earth. We're expendable. I'm not worried for this beautiful planet.

Do you see a film in the Offscreen program that blew you away?
Wheatley: I was blown away by Saul Bass' Phase IV. That film was also one of the influences for In the Earth. I saw it recently and was shocked. We probably also subconsciously stole the shape of the residential towers in High-Rise from Phase IV. Ours are identical to those of Saul Bass.

In the Earth is also a bit like Stalker.
Wheatley: Stalker was definitely an influence. Like The Blair Witch Project, Quatermass and Children of the Stones. There are influences that I am very aware of, but also influences that I am not aware of at all and only notice after having made the film. In the Earth is almost a journey through the history of horror. We start with Hansel and Gretel and go via The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and backwoods-horror step by step towards science fiction. I still find those BBC movies from the 1970s terrifying. Just look at Nigel Kneale's scientific horror.

Isn't In the Earth also a sister film to your earliest work like Kill List or A Field in England?
Wheatley: They are connected. In the Earth is a reflection on those earlier films. For the first time, I made a movie that wasn't completely unlike any previous one. It was nice to go back to the roots and make a horror movie again. I'd forgotten how much I enjoy that.
In a way, I'm mulling over some of the ideas in Kill List. I'm mostly mulling over the question of how do we deal with myths and folklore? What responsibility do you bear when you create your own folklore? I didn't feel responsible at all when I made Kill List. Ten years later, I do have that sense of responsibility. You unleash your stories on the world. They get mixed up with everything and become part of a folklore you may not have wanted.

Why would you be responsible for a movie about hitmen?
Wheatley: The responsibility of the film director is an interesting issue. You have the freedom to say what you want. But you can't tell everything, you have to choose something specific. Why didn't I make a light-hearted, amusing morality comedy but Kill List? I thought about what has changed in those ten years since Kill List. Maybe it's because of my age that I ask myself more questions. But I suspect that something else is at play: the essential concept of truth has been completely eroded over the past ten years. Politicians have co-opted narrative and storytelling techniques and the consequences are dramatic. Trust is broken. In a world where there is no longer a consensus on the truth, you cannot take a position. That's a big problem.

You mean everything's become a story?
Wheatley: What distinguishes humans from animals? Tales! People tell and make up stories. Not just when you're sitting around a camp-fire with friends. We have it in our genes to tell stories. Our brain is constantly inclined to construct or listen to stories. We present ourselves to others through stories in which we ourselves are the hero. From our own perspective, we are always right. We twist and turn a story, usually unconsciously, until we get it right ourselves.
What worries me is that you can scale that idea up. As an individual you believe in your own reality, your own bubble, but as a people, culture or nation you are also locked in such a bubble. We as individuals have a crazy tendency, lazy and pragmatic, to do terrible things. But as a species, humans do just the same. I'm having a hard time with that. I find that a hard nut to crack.

If my sources are correct, you are busy preparing for an animal attack movie. You are going to direct Meg 2, the sequel to the blockbuster in which Jason Statham takes on a prehistoric basking shark. What makes monsters so appealing to filmmakers and fans?
Wheatley: Meg 2 was exactly why I rewatched Jaws. Monsters are great fun and of course they are metaphors. They are a thrilling portrayal of our great fears. That's why we keep bringing them up. That's why we keep returning to the cinemas to watch them. In genre films, we see a mutated version of our own lives. Gangster movies are about work. But gangsters have much more interesting “jobs” than regular people like you and me. We don't get fired by getting a bullet in the neck in a back alley. But in a gangster movie, really, that's just an extreme version of getting the sack. Monsters are a personification of all our fears. In the movie, we can often beat them too.

OFFSCREEN
8 > 26/9, Cinéma Nova, Cinematek, Kinograph, www.offscreen.be
Ben Wheatley’s In the Earth: 18/9, 21.00, Kinograph