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Film: The Fields
Year: 2011
Director: Tom Mattera and David Mazzoni
Writer: Harrison Smith
Starring: Tara Reid, Cloris Leachman and Tommy Lee Wallace
Review:
This film takes place in 1973 and starts out with a little boy; he’s played by Joshua Ormond, in bed. He hears a loud car pull up and then hears someone enter the house. There is arguing and he witnesses someone put a gun in his mother’s face, his mother is played by Tara Reid.
It turns out the next day that the guy who did it is his father, played by Faust Checho. It turns out Reid’s father is the sheriff and they are living with him right now. She tells her mother that she is taking Ormond to live with Checho’s parents. There is something hinted that someone in the house is molesting or could be.
Reid while driving her Ormond to the house, they talk about Charles Manson. The boy is obviously scared of him. We then meet his grandparents, played by Cloris Leachman and Bev Appleton. Appleton likes to drink and Leachman despises it. Leachman is also the more controlling and tells Ormond to not to go into the cornfields.
He does anyway and sees a dead woman. It scares him and he flees back to the farm. He gets scolded for going in. Later when Appleton and Ormond go to the store, there is a missing poster with that girl on it. From the store, they go to a dairy farm where we meet a weird guy played by Louis Morabito. He says some very weird things to Ormond who doesn’t understand. We also meet some hippies who are staying in the area. They scare Ormond too.
From here we get shown a lot of different things. The dysfunction and oddness of the family Ormond is staying with, more of the hippies who are staying at this nearby park and who is stalking this boy from the cornfields? They don’t feel protected when the sheriff hates them because of his daughter, who is married to their son.
This film has all the workings to be really good, but it was really boring. The acting is good for that creepy, unknowing feeling of what could come next. They did very well at making it very weird and spooky; the problem I wasn’t sure what some parts had to do with the overall story. I think if they would take that out and did more that progress the story, it would have been better.
I think you would enjoy this if you lived in the 70s and had a fear of hippies like many did in the era, it might be much better for you. Being that I wasn’t and I never did, I thought it was boring. The film could have done more to promote the feel of horror or the isolated feel of being surrounded by corn, but the direction they went didn’t do it for me. If this sounds interesting, give it a viewing. If not, I would definitely avoid this and look elsewhere.
My Rating: 4 out of 10