Beasts of the Field

After getting rejected for their pilot, a team of desperate producers trying to get their cryptozoology show off the ground con a group of individuals to travel out into the woods to find a legendary creature only for something more dangerous to affect their show and threaten their lives.

This was a pretty solid genre effort. Among the films' better qualities come from the enjoyable first half that gives everything an intriguing and engaging start. Starting with the groups' rejection of their show and the desire to get it filmed as well as the duplicity they use to procure the crew for the shoot is a great way of starting this off, focusing on the desire to get their dream project together but being way out of their element since the obviousness of their sketchy business practices is never noticed or questioned by anyone. The more it carries on with their improper behavior and meltdowns that showcase the incompetent nature of their mission even more and just makes the upcoming encounters that much more fun. Once the film moves into the final half and their struggles in the forest to get out alive, there's a nice bit of energy that carries this one along quite nicely. Their single-minded determination to keep pressing on deeper into the creatures' hunting zone makes for a fun time as their sense of inexperience and incompetence kills off a group member and turns the action around nicely when a new, unexpected threat emerges which is rather fun. This leads to some intriguing cat-and-mouse chases that are quite surprising and unexpected as the series of confrontations by the various members of the group throughout the area provides some thrills and brutal action in the graphic kills included, making fine use of the forest surroundings. These here give the film some likable qualities. This one did have some minor issues involved here. The main drawback is the fact that the film spends the majority of the first half on that build-up about their incompetence about filming this kind of show that it never brings the creature into focus. Rather than do something simple like seeing it in the background without their knowledge or seeing it hunt animals or other people in the woods to break up those kinds of sequences can make for a rather dull time if viewers are looking for a straightforward creature feature. This lack of attention to the creature makes this one somewhat underwhelming at the beginning of the film when it matters and impacts our lack of knowledge about the creature overall since there's nothing about what it is, where it's been living, or anything else. The other slight factor is the somewhat confusing series of actions that carry out through the final half of the film. Regardless of the fun nature involved or the deserving nature of the scenes, the way it twists and turns around on itself comes off rather confusing. The shift in focus from the creature they're tracking to a different killer entirely is a bit out of nowhere with the change being somewhat out-of-nowhere and relies on inference more than anything else to explain what's going on as the series of scenes and chases that emerge here is never really explained. While some might be somewhat turned off by the finale which becomes quite cliched yet doesn't provide the kind of payoff some would want, these here are the main factors that drag this down.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Language and Graphic Violence.

Low budget films usually good. This movie had the worst acting ever. Waste of time. They need to go to an acting school. Could have been good, but no effort and no skills.

First let me say that this is not a great movie. It is extremely rough and fraught with laughable errors. The cast are on par with a group of friends with someone's video camera heading out to *make a movie*.

That being said, it also isn't a hateful movie. The general story line, although very unpolished, shows potential. The concept deals with who or what a monster really is. Even the title is a subtle jab at the cruel and selfish nature of man's heart. The story held my attention and although the acting and dialog was excruciatingly painful. I found myself tipping my hat to this brave crew of first timers who had the courage and trepidation to complete the madness that is film making. Everyone has to start somewhere. I hope thebl best of luck to those who take the opportunity to hone their craft and continue on.

Begins with some nice low-key humour but then goes in a different direction. Unusual and admittedly implausible story, but with interesting and well-acted characters. I'm willing to settle for that.

This is the worst kind of lazy, cynical content pooping (using the word filmmaking is an insult to filmmakers) with the end result beings so poor technically, it's tiring to watch (the only reason I did was to write a review for YouTube).

Underexposed video capture (using the word cinematography is an insult to cinematographers) is compounded by randomly dropping filters onto the poopage resulting in over saturation and further darkening of the image. There's actually a scene in the content poop where the people pretending to be actors argue about poor lighting. I found this insulting as it shows the content poopers knew enough to include it as dialogue but didn't implement it themselves.

Sound is terrible, obviously recorded using the phone mic and the stereo field isn't balanced, the dialogue should have been recorded in mono, or mixed down to mono. Music is awful and used throughout destroying any molecule of tension remaining after the embarrassingly bad 'acting', complete lack of production design, props and costumes.

In an attempt to be positive there's a stripper playing a scientist who has a very nice face, unfortunately I'm not a fan of (obviously fake breasts), for anyone wondering, they are not revealed, guess the content poopers didn't have $50.

The worst thing though is the people connected to the content pooping who have written glowing reviews, what do you think that's going to achieve? It just further demonstrates your contempt for the audience and complete lack of integrity, although as you are clearly not filmmakers I don't suppose that matters to you.