Ben Whitley discovers horror in the Earth Fungi

The way we fragment history can be divided into two eras: before and after the advent of penicillin – or, in other words, pre-antibiotics and antibiotics.

Penicillin was the first antibiotic Discovered in 1928 By Scottish microbiologist Alexander Fleming, who found that juice Penicillium The fungi were able to destroy harmful bacteria. The drug was changed forever, and to this day, penicillin is prescribed for everything from lung infections to sexually transmitted diseases. This extraordinary nectar was not, by chance, in any way produced by the fungus. in some ways The fungus is more active for humans and animals than plants. One reason why we get so many antibiotics from fungi is because we are more closely related to them than any other state of the organism. A 2008 ted talk By the famous American mycologist Paul Stamets.

These properties of fungi – used for antibiotics and antiviral drugs – weigh heavily on the mind as the world suffers from an epidemic. After more than a year passed COVID-19, public discourse, concern and overall collective imagination were reported shift to Focusing on the virus, now, leads to more interest in its preventive: vaccine.

So when Ben Wheatley’s newest film in the earth Opens on a vision familiar to all of us about social vision, quarantine and protective gear – we can only imagine the mission that Dr. Martin takes Lori (Joel Fry) as part of a project deep in an English jungle as part of a project that studies fungi. The purpose is to find a vaccine. The words “COVID-19” are never actually spoken within the film, but there is no doubt what inspired Wheatley’s latest effort, especially as it was filmed Summer of 2020.

But Martin, and Park Scout along with Alma (Ellora Torchia), are heading into the dense English jungle in search of a cure. Instead, they are on a mission to reach a research center where Drs. Olivia Wendall (Hayley Squires) is attempting to understand the fungal network connecting tree-plants in every forest and field around the world. Better understanding this network will help them in crop yields, Martin explains.

You see, the ability of fungi to facilitate antibiotics is not just their miracle. In fact, their most compelling feature is not something that can be seen in mushrooms and molds that thrive above the ground. It is beneath the surface, subtrain: a complex web of fungal strands that connect to the “mycorrhizal network”, often referred to as the “wood wide web”, which traces the roots of different types of plants in any field. adds up. .

Jean-Marc Moncalvo, curator at the Jean-Ontario Museum and a professor in the Department of Ecology at the University of Toronto, explains for Canada. The Reporter Door The white filaments of fungi that grow underground – called “mycelium” – form symbiotic relationships with plant roots, and effectively combine different species within a forest, or vast plain. Communication within fungi is complicated to decrypt, but mycologists have ideas of “telling” the plant to each other. Many of these interactions are hazard warnings. “If there is an infection in one plant,” Monclevo says, “the other [unaffected] Plants react. It seems that this is a ‘volatile chemical’ at work, for example, of how ants communicate through pheromones. ”

Moncalvo goes on to explain that this web is more than just diffusion caution. “This idea of ​​a network and the World Wide Web is not just a communication of information, it is also a translation of nutrients between individual plants in the forest. Eighty percent of land plants are associated with mycelium in their root system. The plant gets access to more water and nutrients, what the fungus takes from this mudra is sugar. “He compares this network to the brain: a complex entanglement of neurons that connect and interact with each other for a variety of purposes and functions.

And as Drs. Wendley has buried himself deep into the wilderness to study this lore of underground communication, Martin, Alma, and the outside world, which means communicating in an environment that is suddenly tetragonal and social disturbances. Be converted to. Martin and Alma’s journey into the wilderness is fraught with awkward silence: we have to wonder if Martin’s dry mode of speech is due to his previous isolation or simply character traits. It’s only when Martin and Alma one day run into their trek to Zac (Reece Sheermith) in the earth Lovecraftian tone – brooding score, gore, existential confrontation, and all – that defines her terror for the remainder of the film.

Zach lives in a tilted canopy off the grid and suffers from a different type of communication: upon contacting Parnag Fegg, a folk tale that speaks of a soul who lives in a forest. His pursuit is mysterious. There is a kind of funny irony in a man separating himself from deep in a forest – whose plants and fungi have yet to break the secrets of scientists – focusing only on the esoteric. Martin and Alma eventually dr. Reaches Wendley, but the lines of reason that we expect to separate scientist and folklore are blurred by Wheatley in a psychedelic manner, wandering the magic restroom (which is assured of rest) There is a deviation of in film).

Wheatley’s story succeeds as a spooky entry that simultaneously conjures up both the mysteries of the natural world and how to be associated with it in spite of it. However, when looking at the relationship between humans and the Earth, it is necessary to recognize that indigenous people have long known the properties of fungi, as described in the brilliant books of the Potavomi botanist Robin Wall Kimmer Collecting moss And Breading Sweetgrass.

In the film, two different tales entice the four characters in the forest: to weave roots of bees, ashes, and cedar to weave the roots of the fungus, and one of the forest spirits, one Blair Witch-Like folklore. But what makes in the earth What is truly remarkable is that Whitley has not historically been seen as positively contradicting these two systems. Wheatley’s thesis is that scientific discovery does not have to be a failure of man’s whims and emotions. It is symbiotic relationships that can serve as a metaphor for the ways in which fungi and plants merge to form the environment.

“One is to see nature and organisms as an interrelated system,” claims Monoclovo. “We say that the unit is a species – there are fungi, plants, animals – but one must understand that the ecosystem is the unit.” Superimposing this paradigm on Wheatley’s film, human units – emotion and reason – should also be seen as informing each other.

This idea of ​​connectivity is beginning to emerge as both a visual origin and a narrative basis within horror cinema. Alex Garland’s 2018 sci-fi horror film DestructionBased on a book of the same name by Jeff Vandermeier, a group of scientists in a field occupied by an anomaly called “Shimmer”. The film’s most haunting scenes are of skeletons belonging to scientists who lost their lives in previous expeditions, spring with vines, moss and flowers. Whatever this “shimmer” is, it combines the molecular makeup of all that is alive, indiscriminately which state it belongs to. A similar tableau features a mysterious entity Inspire, A horror film directed by Gareth Evans and also released in 2018, where humans are entangled in the roots of an island and serve as its environmental protectors.

And that’s something that hasn’t survived the grip of horror television, either: in the first season of NBC Hannibal, The second episode, titled “Amuse-Bouche”, focuses on a pharmacist who organizes people on his body to facilitate the growth of fungi. The pharmacist, Alden Stamets, is named after the aforesaid mycologist, a prominent and important voice in the study of Mankolovo Mykoriza.

After making its debut at the Sundance Film Festival last January, in the earth Received a lukewarm reception, and for a sensible reason: fans hoping for a traditional horror film won’t get one here. Apart from a few moments of classic body horror, the film escapes the usual trope of narrative and visual style. but in the earth There is a good indicator of the direction in which horror is gaining momentum: the meditation attention to humanity’s place in the natural world. Although horror films of past decades were largely associated with the supernatural aside from ecology – spirits, homes, people, or heirlooms – writers and directors have gradually shifted genre sensations to consider fungi and plants that Earth maintains life.

in the earth – The plant is edited in a way, with its psychedelic interludes of imagery that resemble the madness of the film Guy Madin, and the synthesizing score composed by it, Clint mensel – A challenging but meaningful film. The one who questions together and the connection declares science to man with earth, and mysticism.

in the earth Currently playing in theaters, and will be available digitally on 7 May.