5 Times Mother Earth Fought Back in Horror Films

We’ll kick off the marathon with a fun one. Australian film Long Weekend follows Peter (John Hargreaves) and Marcia (Briony Behets), possibly the most insufferable couple of all time, as they decide the only way to fix their obviously broken and abusive marriage is to go camping at a secluded beach and enjoy the gifts of nature…except they both pretty much hate nature. Weaved between yelling at and slapping one another, Peter is shooting at every possible thing that moves, murdering dugongs and throwing his lit cigarettes everywhere, and Marcia is stabbing trees and smashing eagle eggs faster than a Waffle House line cook.

Finally, nature decides it’s had enough of this couple, and starts throwing angry opossums and eagles at them wholesale. Marcia decides she is done, steals Peter’s car, and takes off, getting lost along the way and leaving Peter to fend for himself in the wilderness. Madness ensues as Peter must hunt for his food, hallucinating out of hunger, fear, and fatigue (after one night?!), and accidentally spears Marcia to death, who abandoned the car after the forest caused her to wreck. Peter covers up his crimes, and after hiking all night, finally makes his way to the main road…only to be gruesomely obliterated by a truck that a bird causes to lose control. Nature – 1, Humans – 0.

Now we’re going to level things out a little with a serious found footage eco-horror film that will make your skin crawl. The small town of Claridge, MD, is just trying to enjoy their annual 4th of July festival. Little do they know, a nearby chicken processing plant has been dumping excrement and toxins into the Chesapeake Bay for years. Crab-eating contests and family outings become puke-filled horror shows as growth hormone-pumped isopods have rendered 40% of the bay lifeless, eating their way into and out of any and all plants and animals they can find, including delicious humans.

Local doctor, Dr. Abrams (Stephen Kunken), is overwhelmed with the mass amounts of death caused by giant insects exploding out of his townspeople’s skin, and asks the CDC for help, to no avail. Instead, when the CDC contacts Homeland Security, the government decides to cover up the chaos and claim the incident was due to “unusually high water temperatures.” You may want to invest in a water filter after this one.

Okay, I never said these were all good movies, did I? But c’mon, we need a fun palate cleanser after that last one. The Happening may be wildly known as one of Shyamalan’s worst movies, but honestly, the concept is strong and probably would have worked great for a short film. In this apocalyptic movie, humans start going into trances and committing mass suicides. Although the pandemic is initially thought to be a bio-terrorist attack, Mark Wahlberg and company soon realize that the Earth is finally exacting revenge against the invasive species that has been killing it. Plants are releasing a neurotoxic pollen into the air, which causes humans to self-terminate in various ways, like laying in front of lawnmowers or letting lions eat them.

But that’s not all, these plants are enacting targeted revenge, picking and choosing which humans it will affect, and which humans will live on to help cure the planet. As the phenomenon ends as quickly as it starts, scientists compare The Happening to random Red Tide algal blooms. However, those theories are quickly argued against as the phenomenon starts again in several other highly polluted areas of the world.

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We’re going classic with our fourth film. The Day of the Triffids, based off the novel by John Wyndham, features giant, carnivorous, venomous plants that arrive in spore form when a meteor shower passes Earth. The meteor also conveniently turns most of Earth’s inhabitants blind, rendering them defenseless against an army of murder-plants that want to sting them to death and feast upon their corpses.

In the majority of the film, the real enemy is blindness, as humans are crowding and unintentionally hurting one another, serving up a buffet to the oncoming Triffids. Some fun movie science is done, and our heroes figure out that the only thing that can kill the regenerative Triffids is the thing that covers 96.5% of the Earth…sea water! Our heroes use hoses to douse the Triffids with salty water in a very Signs-like ending, and humanity has seemingly won…this time.

So, we’ve seen plants and animals uprise to take out the competition, but no Mother Earth horror marathon would be complete without nature’s partiers, the FUNgi!…okay, I’ll stop. In The Girl with All the Gifts, humanity has been completely ravaged by a parasitic fungus that transmits by bodily fluids, turning humans into fast, flesh-eating zombies called “hungries.” The film mostly focuses on Melanie (Sennia Nanua), a second-generation hungry that is capable of thinking, learning, and feeling. She and some humans she’s grown fond of, fight for survival after their medical facility is overrun with gen 1 hungries.

Although the goal of the humans are to combat the zombies and the fungus that has changed humanity and regain the normal human way of life, the real takeaway is that the new generations of hungries, adapted to the fungus and still having the emotional perks of humanity, are what the Earth intends to have in store for humanity. As they say in Super Mario Bros., “trust the fungus.”

I hope that aside from watching these films and having a blast, everyone does something today (and every day) to make sure our footprint on this Earth is a little less damaging. Clean out a creek, start recycling, donate, or spread awareness of conservation. Everyone has a part to play in protecting our environment, so do yours before Mother Nature strikes back.

Feature image: The Girl With All The Gifts (2016) | Warner Bros. Pictures

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