From the Old Earth

Here’s a Welsh horror film that runs 46 minutes and feels padded. That should tell you something.

The setup has promise. A working-class bloke named William finds a stone head in his garden and thinks he’s struck it rich. His wife has nightmares about a horned beast-man. The head gets passed around like a cursed chain letter, spreading bad dreams wherever it goes.

The opening sequence gives the game away. We watch Celts perform a ritual sacrifice, but these Celts have 1981 haircuts and mummy-wrapped legs hiding their Adidas. A narrator intrudes to explain what we’re already seeing. Who’s narrating? A time-traveling documentarian? The effect is amateurish, like a Renaissance Faire with delusions of grandeur.

What follows plays like regional horror at its most disappointing. Static cameras watch people talk. They talk some more. A teenager’s room features one decoration: a Snoopy Christmas poster. This is the kind of production design that happens when nobody’s thinking about production design.

What saves the film from complete disaster are the performances. Nobody’s embarrassing themselves. These aren’t the usual stiff amateurs mumbling their lines or over-emoting. They’re trying. They deserve better material.

The creature, when it finally appears, plays peek-a-boo. That’s its big move. Peek-a-boo. The filmmakers blow what must be their entire budget on a slow-motion car crash that has nothing to do with generating actual dread. Then the movie just… stops. No climax. No resolution. It ends like it ran out of film stock or ideas or both.

As a curiosity piece, From the Old Earth has value. How many Welsh-language horror films exist? This one proves there’s talent in the Welsh countryside. But it also proves that talent needs a script, a budget, and another 30 minutes of story.

The old earth has better secrets than this one.