The Burrowers

Wasn’t this movie about little Ginger headed people living in the walls of my home? Oh, it’s about mutant crickets that live beneath the surface who come up at night to gobble you up. Easy mistake to make. I must admit, even though it lacked ginger midgets, I found this straight to video movie actually quite enjoyable.

Set in the Dakota territories in the late 19th century, the movie slowly gains focus on a young woman and a hot Irish bloke who we discover with the voice over work, that he is practicing his proposal of his sweetheart Maryanne. He gives her a Celtic broach and she gives him a kiss, but that night at home with her family, they are rushed to the cellar and are taken. When the Hot Patty McIrish comes calling to get a booty call or whatever, he finds them gone and a large hole in the earth. Believing it to be Indians who abducted them, Hot Patty McIrish rides off to find his boss who was busy having a picnic with the pretty widow and her son and warn him of the Indian invasion.

Forming a small search party, Boss guy, boss guy’s girlfriends son, hot Patty McIrish and, holy crap, is that Clancy Brown? It’s official, this movie rocks. Anyway they ride off to find the missing family of settlers and meet up with a band of soldiers, who’s commanding officer has a kick-ass ‘stache and a proclivity for torturing Indians. As men begin to vanish, doubt about the abductors being natives begins to grow in the minds of our heroes. Ditching the crazy ‘Stache man and his gang and gaining a friend in the black ex-slave with an Irish name, the five head off on their own, when they stumble across the paralyzed body of a young woman who had been buried in the shallow ground, a victim of the Burrowers.

Terrified and hunted, the search for what the Burrowers are and how to kill them and retrieve McIrish’s babe so he can finally propose is officially on.

I have to tell you, there were a few times where I covered my face anticipating something creepy. The fear you feel in the audience is fueled by the great use of imagery and the build-up of terror in being hunted by the unknown in the badlands beyond civilization and surrounded by people who perceive one another to be enemies.