Ivy (Toby Poser, who also co-wrote and co-directed along with John Adams) is a psychic who has lost her supernatural spark, but the show must go on if her teen daughter Echo (Zelda Adams) is gonna eat, so she just kind of wings it going forward.
Speaking of Echo, drunk driver Kurt (the aforementioned Adams) swerves to miss a deer and instead gets Echo under his wheels. This of course forces him to throw Operation: Save Ass into high fuckin’ gear, and he chucks Echo in the back of his truck and heads off to cover up his crime!
With Echo missing, Ivy goes all-in on re-opening her third eye to solve the mystery… meanwhile ol’ Kurt is dealing with the vengeful ghost of Echo!
The Deeper You Dig manages to convey both Ivy’s journey, and Echo’s horror biz in a way that makes for a film part tripped-out spirit quest, and full on ghost story supernatural shocker with neither getting short changed along the way!
As Ivy tries to regain her mojo, we are treated to bizarre images and spats of fever dream, hallucinogenic logic while still keeping the journey of a mother trying to solve her daughter’s disappearance as an anchor to reality, while Echo’s sequences post-mortem are like a straight up fright flick… a great series of dichotomies (not to mention a few twists along the way) that keeps the entire picture engaging and fresh for us horror hounds!
As strong as the feature presentation is, Arrow Video (along with MVD Entertainment) have provided plenty of bonus content on this Blu-ray release as well!
First up we get a lively and informative audio commentary courtesy of Poser and Adams (who are husband and wife in real life, with Zelda Adams being their daughter), and an interview with the family in their home.
Following that we get film critic Anton Bitel examining the theme of family in the Adam’s work, a look at the film’s effects (with commentary from special visual and make-up effects artist Trey Lindsay).
Also included are an interview with the family from FrightFest 2019, a duo of music videos from Hellbender, the film’s theatrical trailer, and an image gallery… but there’s still more!
Also included on a second disc is John Law’s 2018’s The Hatred (co-starring Zelda Adams); a 59 minute terror tale concerning an orphaned girl who manages to resurrect an executed soldier from the great beyond to mete out unholy vengeance deep within the Blackfoot territory of the late 1800’s.
The Hatred is a slow burn paranormal potboiler set among the snow covered woods and mountains of the Canadian wilderness, and contains plenty of tension and atmosphere, and some strong performances to boot!
As for special features on this disc, we get a trio of music videos from the group Kid Kalifornia… and that’s all she wrote.
The Deeper You Dig is one of the most unique and visually interesting paranormal pictures you are likely to put your eerie eyeballs upon, and deserves the highest preternatural praise!
