Tribeca Review: Underland Uncovers Subterranean Wonders

As humanity continues mining Earth’s resources with wanton abandon, the concerns of those with the most influence have been towards the skies––the space dreams of inhabiting another planet once we’ve depleted all this one has to offer. But what could exploring Earth’s subterranean wonders tell us about the origins and future of our species? Robert Macfarlane’s evocatively transportive, poetically imaginative 2019 book Underland investigated such questions through the perspectives of those seeking the void. In adapting the text to the screen, Rob Petit takes a compelling (if more straightforward) excavation into the depths of our planet.

Weaving the separate travels of three intrepid explorers, the Darren Aronofsky-produced Underland follows Fátima Tec Pool, an archaeologist in Mexico who travels through the otherworldly wonders that are cenotes––natural sinkholes mainly found in the Yucatán Peninsula across which her Mayan ancestors also traveled hundreds of years ago. Bradley Garrett is a California-based geographer who explores man-made underworlds, many of which are long-abandoned or home to the less-fortunate, in hopes of bringing these otherwise unseen experiences to light. Finally, Mariangela Lisanti is a Princeton University physicist who travels a few kilometers underground, where the radioactivity of the Earth can’t interfere with her tireless pursuit of dark matter and how it may unlock the mysteries of the universe.

These are all fascinating stories in their own right, so much so that cross-cutting between them robs each of a certain transportive power. While viewing Underland I was often reminded of Michelangelo Frammartino’s recent Il buco, which recreated a journey of speleologists who descended into one of the planet’s deepest caves in southern Italy. Mostly absent of dialogue, it made one feel every moment of sheer claustrophobia and wonder as they burrowed deeper and deeper. With Petit creating a tapestry of these stories, there are moments of such awe––such as a single, extensive first-person shot plunging into the abyss, or another of Fátima Tec Pool and her crew contorting their bodies to fit through the tightest of passageways. Seeing the massive underwater device Lisanti uses for her research is truly awe-inspiring, as if plucked from a sci-fi epic by James Cameron or Denis Villeneuve. Yet each time we start feeling invested in the journey, Petit jumps to another thread, creating a dissatisfying, scattershot approach.

With a constantly probing narration from both our subjects and Sandra Hüller about the unknown secrets of the subterranean, Underland is far more interested in questions than the answers humanity doesn’t possess. As Garrett notes, we have more history underground than the tallest skyscrapers one could ever build, and at a certain point, when they’ve crumbled and humanity is dead and gone, the stories of the underground may be all that remains. These are fascinating concepts and, more than a journey through these spaces, Underland is chilling for its reminder of just how infinitesimal our lives are in the scope of a world whose time is measured in eons and epochs.

While Petit thankfully never resorts to conventional talking heads, certain sections of narration suggest such an approach. One wonders what an adaptation of Macfarlane’s book might look like if he let the images speak more for themselves. With an ending that aims to conventionally convey a shared feeling of connection between every living thing on the planet, there’s the sense Underland has juggled a lot of ideas without ever landing on the precise form to convey them. As noted near the finale, science thrives on the all-consuming urge to open endless doors until there’s none left. Underland opens a number of fascinating doors, and if the experience impels one to pick up Macfarlane’s book: all the better.

Underland premiered at the 2025 Tribeca Festival.

The post Tribeca Review: Underland Uncovers Subterranean Wonders first appeared on The Film Stage.