Like a number of the 8 Films to Die For, this entry in the original 2007 series leaves something to be desired. I got excited when I saw that Charlie Murphy landed a role in the film, but, unfortunately, Unearthed leaves him little room to be funny. Yes, I know this is a horror movie, but I've found that a little dark humor can sometimes make this kind of cliched, formulaic B-movie a little less painful to watch. Unfortunately, the only laughs you might get out of Unearthed come at the expense of the CGI monster, and those aren't the kind of laughs you want in a horror movie.

The CGI isn't all bad overall, as some of the close-up shots of the monster (apparently a blood relative of the monster in Alien) play out pretty effectively, but the long-range views, especially those showing the monster in motion, pretty much scream the word fake.

While I'm criticizing this brainchild of writer/director Matthew Leutwyler, I also have to point to a number of unanswered questions, inadequately developed subplots, significant leaps in logic and plenty of self-produced fodder for the likes of Mystery Science Theater 3000. One of my favorite moments comes during the lead-in to the film's final act, when a character who was previously at a loss to explain what was going on suddenly lays out the entire story for us in great detail.

The last thing Sheriff Annie Flynn (Emmanuelle Vaugier) needs is the unleashing of some ancient alien killing machine on four legs into her relatively quiet desert community. She's already haunted by a tragic accident that will surely cost her her job when the townsfolk have their say at a town meeting scheduled for next week; she's well on her way to becoming a bona fide alcoholic; and she has never gotten the respect she deserves just because she's a female -- and rather an attractive one, at that. She is also very young, which made it hard for this viewer to really accept her as a full-blown sheriff (if we extrapolate using Vaugier's age, she would have become sheriff at the tender age of 27).

Getting back to the monster, he is basically an old Indian legend unearthed and brought back into the world by a rogue Indian archaeologist (they thought he was mad at the university) who wanted to prove that his people were indeed all but decimated centuries ago by a monstrous creature. I think we can all agree that he definitely proved his point.

Alongside the sheriff, our list of would-be survivors includes two blondes and a hitchhiker they picked up along the way to California; a businessman (Charlie Murphy) who -- like the other strangers -- is stranded there because the gas truck that was supposed to replenish the tanks crashed several miles down the road (and the next town in this desert landscape is well over a hundred miles away); a young botanist who came back home to help take care of her Native American grandfather; and -- of course -- the idiot who unearthed the monster in the first place. They spend most of the movie fleeing from one place to another in diminishing numbers as the monster takes them out one by one. By the time they finally come up with an appropriately cockamamie way to stop the thing, you start to wonder if anyone is going to be left to actually execute the plan.

Don't worry too much, though, because you probably won't care a lot about any of the characters (although I must admit I was seriously rooting for Murphy to survive).

I guess the film gets a little gory in places, but it's certainly not enough to land Unearthed on any gorehound's list of must-sees. In fact, there's really nothing special about this film at all, and it ends with too many plot holes and logical leaps. Unearthed won't bore you to tears, but it's not really going to get your heart pumping, either.