SYNOPSIS:
Aspiring extraterrestrial reporter Oliver has just two million seconds in which to film an ambitious documentary study of a quiet, northern English town. He is determined to make a name for himself back home and earn the respect of his ailing father, a legend in the field, but the fragmented Cousins family with whom he is lodging - careworn Marion, taciturn David and their two grown children, straitlaced Anna and compulsive Carl - each soon develop their own reasons for wanting him to stay. When his first attempt proves clumsily inept, Oliver must swallow his pride and acknowledge a need for help, but - as a burgeoning collaboration with the lovable but troubled Carl blossoms into friendship - Oliver's very presence catalyses a fundamental, irreversible change at the heart of the family, and he is left with little time and a big decision; what to take home and what to leave behind.
Like Skeletons, Shaun of the Dead or Edward Scissorhands, EARTHED collides its genre with a cast of thoroughly polite, middle class characters, who strive at all costs to maintain normality. Taking its colourful, hyperreal cues from Wes Anderson, P.T. Anderson and Michel Gondry, the film is an intimate, warmhearted story about brotherly love, creative collaboration and what happens to a family when the children aren't children any more.
And blue slime is involved.
