A Genesis Found
“A Genesis Found” is listed as an “adventure” on it’s IMDb page, but it’s not the type that has break-neck thrills and chases. Instead, this is the story of a young man journeying into the past, both historical and his family’s, and finding something in him he never really knew he had. The film may have archaeology at it’s center, but we’re a long way from Indiana Jones here.
Gardner Patton (Elliot Moon) is a modern-day college student taking classes with his girlfriend, Kelsey (Elise Zieman), and studying anthropology at the University of Alabama. It’s an interest that runs in the Patton family: his grandfather, John Patton Jr. (Bennett Parker) was a famous anthropologist himself who, in 1938, discovered a skeleton that could have profound implications for mankind. He hid the evidence immediately, only to reveal it later in a sensational memoir that implied extraterrestrial existence. Doing so disgraced his name, and left him a joke in his community. Now, as his class goes to a digging exercise at the same place his grandfather made his supposed discovery, Gardner’s cousin, Bart (Luke Weaver), comes to down shooting a documentary. In theory, it could be a coincidence, but Gardner, curious to find the truth about his grandfather’s claims, nonetheless decides to team up with Bart to uncover the truth, not necessarily sure of what his cousin knows, but more interested in his own pursuits than his cousin’s.
Writer-director Lee Fanning, making his first feature, has an entertaining story to tell. If you’re a fan of the likes of Indiana Jones and/or “The Mummy” movies, this film is going to be right up your alley. Don’t expect boulder chases or big CG effects, though; this is a low-tech adventure focused more on story and character. Fanning does a very good job of creating tension and intrigue through simply moving back and forth between Gardner’s time and his grandfather’s without making it feel exclusively like a way of masking the film’s low budget roots. This is simply the best way to tell the story, and Fanning has some fine collaborators in doing so, including cinematographer Stephen Lucas (whose visual approach to the ’38 sequences is simple, but effective) and composers Brett Robinson and Christopher Whitney, whose score feels very Southern Gothic and gives the film the feel of a mystery to be uncovered. Even when the story wraps up, there are still questions left unanswered, which is always a good way to end a film about the unknown. Was Gardner’s grandfather telling the truth? We’re left to think one thing, but there is still doubt whether the actual truth will ever be known. This doesn’t end with the Ark of the Covenant being locked up in an endless warehouse, but the uncertainty it’s hero faces about what he just went through is just as palpable, and the events leading up to it are just as engaging.
