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The Burrowers (2008) is a western/horror film currently available on Tubi. The storyline follows a group of cowboys hired to investigate the disappearance of a family from a remote town. Initially suspecting Native Americans, they soon uncover that something far more sinister may be responsible.

Written and directed by J. T. Petty (Hellbenders), the film features Clancy Brown (The Shawshank Redemption), Jocelin Donahue (Doctor Sleep), Doug Hutchison (The Green Mile), and Laura Leighton (Melrose Place).

The film succeeds in creating an authentic western atmosphere, with well-designed sets, costumes, and backdrops. Clancy Brown delivers a strong performance, perfectly suited to his role. Unfortunately, the pacing is sluggish, with much of the runtime spent on cowboys bickering rather than advancing the plot. The horror elements are minimal until the last 45 minutes, and even then, the monster design and special effects are underwhelming. While there are a few entertaining shootouts and some decent twists, they aren't enough to salvage the film.

In conclusion, The Burrowers looks the part and boasts a solid cast, but its lackluster horror elements and slow pacing make it a disappointment. I'd score it a 5/10.

Average story, low budget film. One of those random streaming movies I watch because the rating is okay and I haven't seen it. Would say it is a horror movie though, no real scares or tension and the violence isn't up to an R rated horror at least for my taste.

Strange movie. It's nearly Tremors, nearly Ravenous, nearly The Descent and nearly interesting.

But three 'nearly's' ain't getting it done I'm afraid.

Set in 1879 – 100 years before Billy Corgan found a year worth singing about – The Burrowers refer to… things, that beset a group of soldiers, civilians and cowboys searching for members of a missing presumed taken by Indians in a violent raid.

The civvies have a more direct interest in finding those missing, but it seems the soldiers are driven by more sketchy motivations. It is after they indulge in some basic prolonged torture that the civvies decide to break and head off alone deep into Indian territory.

It is here that things finally get to the point – and by that I mean the plot starts dealing with the events and 'things' referred to on the DVD cover. Only took half the film to get there.

As the searchers forge ever onward they begin noticing shallow but obvious holes in the terrain, unnatural looking holes, near one of these a young girl is found buried in the dirt – literally buried – only her scalp barely shows on the ground surface. Stranger still the girl is alive, though catatonic, and she is immediately sent back to the town with a young boy as her chauffeur.

The remaining crew move forward, by this stage as confused as we are. Until they finally meet those responsible for the holes, after this everything quickly falls into place, meaning the film can be wrapped up similarly swiftly.

The design of the 'burrowers' is only so-so, they don't really look that effective which explains also why they are not shown on screen mostly as glimpses and in the fringes. In fact the director showed more close ups of various insects in the first hour than the titular creatures.

I kinda liked the brief National Geographic explanation behind the burrowers living habits (think spiders) and I kinda liked the pacing near the end. But really this is like a Dean Koontz book, come up with an interchangeable monster/creature/virus/'insert scary thing X', spend two thirds of the book lazily setting the scene, then have the final third about dealing with 'X'.

It's all quite straightforward and not quite worthwhile.

Final Rating – 5 / 10. A brave, sincere and futile attempt at creating an original horror movie that doesn't work because even in small borrowings the original sources are obvious (and better).

I really wanted to like this film after I warmed to the idea - frontier western meets creature horror; there's something likable about the premise that brought back fond 90s memories of Tremors. The plot synopsis revolves around a small group's attempts to locate the perpetrators of a murdered white family, only to find something much more sinister as their journey progresses.

Sounds great right? it is, up to a point; the cinematography and stills are on occasion inventive and far more subtle than the script. With the exception of the hunts moustached anti-semitic leader, who fails valiantly at being threatening, the cast do a passable job.

And therein lies the problem; it never really lifts off, but hovers above the grass much like the camera-work. Die-hard horror fans may find the pace to be slow, and the ridiculous cultural stereotypes will only annoy anyone lured by the thought of a 'serious' scary movie. The thrills and scares come a little way in, rendered more creepy than shocking until the finale, which delivers with a small D. The creature effects are rather good, and it was refreshing to see only a partial use of CGI, as well as the inventive fate of the victims. Even with all these likable ideas, it stumbled along to a rather abrupt finish; the lack of character depth (aside from a patronising O-Irish flashback) left me indifferent about the plot holes offered in the final scene. Semi-coherent, inventive, mildly scary...yet boring.

My mouth bleeding from being repeatedly bludgeoned with the film's message, I can almost concede to the gross historical inaccuracy that white men caused all our problems and we should learn to get along. It almost made me feel like having a coke.

As far as entries in the b-movie industry of creature features go, The Burrowers is surprisingly interesting if only because it chooses the oddest of scenarios.

The script, though far from great, feels like something more inventive and legitimate than just a handful of words on a page, with the same recycled phrases typical of the genre. (ex. how do we kill it, we gotta get moving) The special effects convince, but more importantly, they re not needed too much because the threat is kept in the shadows out of sight, as all good horror films should do.

So what then is wrong with the film? It's just a case of running out of steam. Around the 2/3 mark, the film starts to degrade just in time for the climax. The first hour functions as a decent build up, as we get closer and closer to the mystery of what our characters are looking for. Therein lies the problem. Eventually you realize that The Burrowers has been slow and devoid of story. By the time it unleashes its gooey climax, you may well have lost interest. Furthermore you may not even care that the ending is a cheap shot, because even though you started with a fair investment in the story, by the end you just feel like an audience member sitting in the dark waiting to go.

Hoping to find his loved ones, a man joins a group of settlers in the Wild West to look for them and stumble upon their abduction at the hands of a vicious race of creatures and must get away before they suffer the same fate.

This turned out to be quite enjoyable and entertaining for what it was, a simple creature feature. By being set in the Old-West, it takes the suspense to a rather interesting scenario by utilizing the time-frame constraints in terms of weaponry and knowledge about the titular creatures and really making it about the journey of discovery going on about the creatures and what's going on, which is a lot of fun. The setting is used to fine effect with the time-line war with the Indians that was going on at the time and manages to get a lot of mileage out of that storyline with several big action scenes against the tribes in the area making for a rather cohesive feel about the time and place here being somewhat underused in the genre. This gives it a refreshing taste of originality that comes rather nicely with the impressively utilized creatures, simply by being an original creature in terms of behavior, appearance and general feel in the first place but also settling in with the time-frame issues already mentioned to generate an incredibly chilling and suspense air about it, for the gradual dawning on the men that rogue Indians aren't to blame for the disappearances but rather these strange, fearsome creatures makes this quite suspenseful as all that becomes known about them comes from the interactions between the victims and the survivors and it all feels really fresh and unique. The finale itself is a lot of fun and certainly gets a lot to like about it as well with lots of action and plenty of gore wrapped up in the general dispatching of the creatures, resulting in a fine finish to this. There's some problems, though, as the film is just not all that fun in terms of pace, as this tends to wander around for so much time dealing with the Indian side-plot that it really only leaves the creatures to be present for two or three scenes altogether, really making it tough to get into this as the pace is just so sluggish and weak that there's not a lot of time to dwell on the action to keep things exciting. With the lack of engaging subplots to hang off of, since those as well are sidetracked by the war against the tribe and the inherent stupidity of the cavalry to deal with the issue, this is quite a difficult film to get into and really takes a while to get going. For a final disappointment, the fact that the creatures are difficult, blurry blobs of CGI mess during their scenes really takes the sting out of them a little when it's hard to make out what they are exactly, but all told this is still a fairly fun effort.

Rated R: Graphic Language and Graphic Violence.

"The Burrowers" takes place sometime after the Civil War and before the United States' western expansion. Some strange creatures who live underground have surfaced to feed and they seem to have a taste for humans.

After a family is massacred in their own home and one of the women comes up missing, a search party is formed to go get her. The search party is joined by some Union soldiers as they seek out the "Indians" they believe have kidnapped her.

The Burrowers were barely featured though they were sorely needed to make this movie even average. They teased the creatures for pretty much the whole movie then gave the audience the full disappointing entree at the end. "The Burrowers" sought to be different by taking place in a different era, but like most scary movies, it sucks.

Kind of resembling a Cormack McCarthy story, The Burrowers opens with an unflinching look at racial violence in the Old West. The director takes time to weave a tale of mysterious disappearances on the frontier, which are initially thought to be the work of Native Americans. The true culprits are not human at all, but that only becomes clear after men have shown themselves capable of inflicting their own horrors.

Well-paced, shot and acted, this movie suffers from two tragic flaws. First, the dialogue was very poorly mixed, and most characters sound as if they're mumbling. If one could make out much of conversation, the second problem might be explained. And that is the ending, which makes no sense at all. It's as if it were written for another movie altogether, and it's the only reason I can't give this otherwise great movie a better rating.