Press Kit

A fracking horror story that follows two neighboring farm families who find their relationships are strained when one of them chooses to lease their land to a natural gas company. In the midst of growing tension, the land is drilled, and something long-dormant and terrifying, deep beneath the earth's surface is released. "Unearth" is about the horrifying repercussions that are sown by shortsighted decisions, and what our children reap from our actions.

Adrienne Barbeau ("The Fog," "Escape From New York," "Creepshow," "Swamp Thing"), Allison McAtee (Tyler Perry's "The Haves and the Have Nots"), P.J. Marshall ("American Horror Story"), and Rachel McKeon (Marvel's "Jessica Jones") star in indie eco-horror/thriller "Unearth."

Lyons spent his entire youth on farms and in the woods of Pennsylvania. The director/writer says, "I learned the importance of the land and our relationship to our environment. After viewing the effects of the oil and gas industry on my beautiful state in documentaries like "Gasland" and "Triple Divide," and evidence of years of cover-ups regarding water contamination caused by fracking, I was inspired to make this movie - an eco-horror genre film with an arthouse aesthetic and sensibility."

"A character-driven, female-fronted film, rare for this genre, "Unearth," focuses on everyday working-class families. We feel our portrait of contemporary America will hit home for many viewers," said co-director Swies.

Blucas says, "We shot this film pre-COVID. It's shocking to me how "Unearth" parallels what is happening now -- with the unemployment rates so high, with the division of people, with the world in disarray and fearing a scary unknown, with grocery stores at half inventory and people forced to be at home, left alone to figure it out. There's nothing more terrifying than that."

"I think what most actors responded to was the authenticity to which the story unfolds, says Blucas. "Most of us are from the Northwest PA area, and we all know struggling family farmers. But in pure storytelling terms, this is a script that allows the audience to care about the characters. When bad things unfold, they do so organically and believably, and then we are already invested in the characters, so we don't want anything to happen to them."

McAtee shares, ""Unearth" is two-fold in that it references the exposure of secrets and the consequences of actions, but also a literal exposure of a dormant malignancy. These two struggling families are pitted against a darker evil after one leases their land to a company to frack and a terrifying dormant spore is released."