31 Days of Halloween Day 6: It's Revenge of the Mushroom People in 'Gaia' and 'In The Earth'

[Once again I'm going to attempt to do a horror(ish) movie review a day for the entire month of October. Might throw in the odd horror related book, comic, or music review as well. I've done this the last few years here and on The Cleveland Movie Blog. Most of the time I succeeded. Other times I didn't. Last year I completely failed and didn't do it at all. I'm optimistic about this year.]

 

Louie Schwarzberg’s 2019 documentary FANTASTIC FUNGI walked (or perhaps more accurately, blurred) the line between science and new age woo in its exploration of earth’s fungal lifeforms, and the theory that they may have some sort of interconnected intelligence. Similarly, the late Terrence McKenna wrote several books on his belief that mushrooms and other plant-based hallucinogens were a way to communicate with a metaphysical intelligence he referred to as “the other”.

 

Perhaps that same intelligence reached out to filmmakers Ben Wheatley and Jaco Bouwer, who independently of one another made IN THE EARTH (Wheatley) and GAIA (Bouwer, from a screenplay by Tertius Kapp). Both films deal with the fungal kingdom interacting with humans. But rather than benevolent enlightenment, the protagonists wind up taking decidedly bad trips more akin to Ishiro Honda’s MATANGO, known to American aficionados of psychotronic cinema as ATTACK OF THE MUSHROOM PEOPLE.