Underland: Immersive Subterranean Cinema
by Karen Reyes
“When I go underground, it’s not to find things that are special, necessarily, but to find what we have tried to forget,” said urban explorer and writer Bradley Garrett as he climbed through a hole in an underground, undisclosed location. Armed with a headlamp and his exploration gear, there’s no telling what he’ll run into—and that’s part of the fun.
Underland premiered at the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival and is based on Robert Macfarlane’s novel of the same name. Director Robert Petit captured the stunning visuals and philosophical implications of various “underlands” or subterranean caves, storm drains, and even a lab two kilometers below the Earth’s surface.
Starting in a cenote in the Yucatán Peninsula, the crisp ambient sounds of nature and the combination of static shots with hand-held camera movements make for an almost overwhelming immersion. We’re taken from being faraway observers to bystanders, to up close and personal in the faces of the film’s subjects, as if we’re climbing, crawling, and descending right along with them. The natural sound is paired expertly with perfectly-timed swells of dramatic music that drop you right into a storm drain in Las Vegas, or into a cage in Canada, traveling two kilometers underground to a research lab. These qualities are enough to transport us into other worlds—a storm drain doesn’t feel like a storm drain and a cave system doesn’t feel like a cave system when your access to the surface world is gone.
Underland makes you consider that the space beneath our feet might be just as otherworldly as another planet. Humans talk about discovering and exploring outer space, but we haven’t come close to understanding everything our own planet has offered, and has yet to offer. Petit’s exploration of three drastically different underground lands is incredibly effective and impressive in inspiring conversation around human history, our present, and what our future might look like.
The film almost exclusively uses narration rather than diegetic dialogue to start that conversation. Whether it’s from the narrator (Sandra Hüller) herself or from our three subjects, Bradley, Fátima, and Mariangela, the narration aids in enthralling the viewer from beginning to end. We seem to jump in during their normal routines and are subject to the kinds of thoughts and feelings they have while they work in these sunken places. This refreshing form of storytelling also creates a narrative flow between three stories that don’t necessarily connect otherwise nor have a beginning, middle, or end.
Separated into six sections (or acts), the narrative also follows a distinct and innately human philosophical curiosity. We want to know everything about everything and Underland leans into that. Our subjects discuss what draws them to these underlands, why they pursue them, and the risks and consequences of being there. They either accept that they can only go so far in their exploration or determine their hopes for the future of human discovery.
This is a beautiful deep dive into the unknown worlds beneath our comfortable lives. The cinematic view of underworlds pushes us to reconsider what we know about the world we live in, and what lies in places rarely seen by human eyes. Underland is as much a touching art piece as it is a fascinating documentary, and is entirely worth every minute.