After its UK premiere at 2019's Frightfest the latest project from film-making team the Adams family (father John, mother Toby Poser and daughter Zelda) gets a Blu-ray release from Arrow Films.
Driving home from a bar late one night Kurt (John Adams), the worse for alcohol, knocks down and kills fourteen year old Echo (Zelda Adams). He buries the body and tries to forget about the incident while he works on the rundown house he's renovating in the woods. But he's reckoned without Echo's mother Ivy (Toby Poser) who is a psychic, and Echo herself, who has every intention of manifesting her now dead self through Kurt's body.
A very low budget effort that is nevertheless extremely competently shot, edited, acted and scored, THE DEEPER YOU DIG's opening act is very much like an EC comics story as Echo comes back from the grave to haunt Kurt. Then things start to get weird and there are a couple of weird moments that are pleasingly reminiscent of Don Coscarelli's 1979 PHANTASM.
The film is a slow burn, in fact in some places it's a bit too slow and could maybe have done with a good 20-30 minutes being cut from its running time. That said it's an impressive effort and far, far better than most of what is being made on similar (and higher) budgets out there at the moment (including some of this month's other releases).
Arrow's two disc set comes with a commentary track from the husband and wife directors, and a 50 minute interview with all three of the Adams family. Anton Bitel spends nearly 30 minutes contextualising the film within the Adams' filmography and examining themes within it in the video essay 'It's In the Blood'. There's also 12 minutes with special effects coordinator Trey Lindsay, the Frightfest TV interview from last year's festival, music videos, an image gallery and a trailer. As a bonus, the second disc has an earlier Adams project, THE HATRED (2018) which runs just under an hour and is worth a look after and if you enjoyed the main feature.
THE DEEPER YOU DIG is out in a two disc Blu-ray set from Arrow Films on Monday 5th October 2020
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