- Directed by J.T. Petty
- Written by J.T. Petty
- Stars Clancy Brown, William Mapother, Sean Patrick Thomas, Doug Hutchinson
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 36 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbZQf761XXY
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
It’s a solid piece of work, with monstrous forces at work going against humans in the Old West. The characters are interesting, dealing with an impossible situation in a pretty realistic way. We liked it quite a bit.
Synopsis
In the Dakota territories in 1879, there was an attack at the neighbor’s house, and the women and children hid in the root cellar. They hear lots of shooting upstairs. Something comes down after them, and it doesn’t sound quite human. Credits roll.
John Clay examines the scene and says they were all killed or taken by Indians. Elsewhere, William Parcher goes on a picnic date with Gertrude and her son. Fergus Coffey rides up and tells him what happened to Marianne and her family.
Coffey, Parcher, and the boy Dobie go examine the bodies. Coffey finds a strange hole not far from the house, but they can’t explain it. Henry Victor and a bunch of soldiers arrive, and they stop to bury the dead family. Still, six people are missing, and the whole posse rides out in search of the Indians who took them. As they ride, we notice holes in the ground with things moving in them.
The group soon finds an Indian, and they soon run him down. They torture him for information, but he only talks to Callaghan, to whom he says, “They will eat you alive.”
The men camp for the night. We see something moving out in the tall grass. In the morning, Henry Victor wonders what happened to four men who vanished overnight. They torture the prisoner more, who talks about “Burrowers.” Henry still thinks they need to head to the reservation to find the missing white women. They find another of those round holes, like they saw near the farm in the beginning.
Clay, Coffey, Dobie, and Parcher leave the military escort and go off on their own. They set camp for the night, and we see something out there in the darkness–it’s Callaghan, who has also abandoned Victor Henry’s men.
They find a carriage, but no men or horses, just the people’s baggage on top. What kind of bandit does that? Then they do find a body buried in the dirt, but she’s not dead. There’s something in her shoe making a scraping noise, and they soon find that she can only move one of her toes. They still think it’s an Indian problem, the “Burwer Tribe.”
They send Dobie along with the carriage to take the woman to find a doctor. The other four ride on to an Indian camp that’s been completely abandoned. They’re soon surrounded and shot at by other Indians, and Clay is killed.
Night falls, and Dobie and the girl camp for the night. Creatures come and paralyze him and drag him away to bury him alive.
Coffey wakes up at night; Callaghan says Parcher is gone. They see the monsters attacking Parcher, and they drive them away. Parcher’s been scratched or bit, and he’s slowly going numb. They find an Indian woman who says the Burrowers have marked Parcher. She explains that they come every third generation. They were here before white people, and they used to feed on the buffalo. They bury food and let it ripen before eating. Without the buffalo, they found “other food.”
By morning, Parcher’s looking sicker and sicker, but they all ride on. At night, the monsters are still just out of sight in the grass. They all see them this time. Parcher accidentally shoots Callaghan in the leg. Now they all know it’s not Indians.
They run into some Utes who speak French, so they can communicate about the Burrowers. They want to use Parcher as bait. Callaghan and Coffey let them take him. They drop Maryanne’s broach, which Coffey recognizes; she’s dead, so he’s ready to go home.
Coffey says even going home isn’t safe because they don’t know how to kill or stop the Burrowers. He follows the Utes to rescue Parcher but finds him tied down in the woods. Just as he unties Parcher, Coffey steps into a bear trap. The Burrowers appear and eat Parcher alive. But the Utes drugged Parcher, which incapacitates the Burrowers enough to fight them.
Coffey gets out of the bear trap and knocks down one of the creatures. They are very hard to kill. He stabs a bunch of them with spears, but they’re all still alive.
When the sun comes up, the Burrowers start to scream and smoke. The sunlight kills them! They dissolve to the point there’s no evidence.
Coffey catches up with Callaghan and the Indian woman, who are both wounded. Unfortunately, Victor Henry’s unit caught up to them first. The cavalry hung the Indians. They amputated Callaghan’s leg, and he died in the process. Victor mentions that Callaghan was ranting and raving about monsters or something.
Coffey rides back home, alone. He doesn’t say anything to the soldiers; it would just be his word.
As credits roll, we watch the Burrowers dig up and eat Dobie, who is still alive…
Commentary
It’s a slow-moving Western story, like “The Searchers,” only with underground monsters. The creature design is really interesting, and you never get too good a look at the monsters.
It’s got an interesting group of characters and an unusual situation. Everything plays out fairly believably, and no one really does anything too unreasonably stupid.
It’s pretty good!