The Fields

A tense and atmospheric psychological thriller that gets it right- the right script, cast, crew, music, feel, tone and look. The 3 main cast members, Josh Ormond, Bev Appleton, and Cloris Leachman are pitch perfect, playing characters so realistically that you can follow the story without interruption; so important. A great cast of supporting characters creates a true, real life, small town feel for this truly disturbing story.

Keep an eye out for Josh Ormond; I think we will be seeing a lot from this young man. Such a huge part for such a young man and he managed it beautifully! Be sure to see this film. If you miss it, you'll regret it!

How anyone rated this a 10 is beyond my belief. There was no storyline. I tried very hard to fall in love with the characters but it never happened. Had no idea what was happening half the time and the corn field kept dying or being green? What? The boy seemed to just randomly appear places. Very bad. No suspense. Not scary. Disappointing beyond Belief. Made an account just to yell about this bad movie because i was so misled. The movie was about 40 minutes of simply trying to build up characters that i ceased to fall in love with. Its was very unfortunate because after seeing quite a few good ratings i had hoped for a better outcome. Made my family wait and watch to see an uneventful bad ending. A waste of my day.

The Fields is one of those independents that engages and almost enamors you at the beginning. You suffer through Tara Reid giving a performance about as impressive as one of the corn stalks in the titular fields because you know Cloris Leachman is going to appear shortly and make it all better. And she does, for a while. Her brash, obnoxious, yet troubled and anxious grandmother character has depth and subtlety that's well worth seeing.

But as time goes by you start to get the uneasy feeling that the writer had no real sense of where they were taking the story. By the end of the first hour you're pretty certain that the film is going to continue turning in aimless circles and then just fizzle out... but by then you figure you've already invested an hour, you might as well see it through to the end just to see if you were right...

Half an hour later you look at the fizzled out remnants and say to yourself "yep, I was right".

It's easy to see what The Fields was aiming for - a slow burn, southern Gothic drama with horror undertones - and most of the components are solid. The direction and cinematography is nice, the acting (Reid excepted) is outstanding (even from the kid), and the score is fittingly creepy. However, as with all things the strength of the whole is dependent on the weakest link and in this case the weak link is the screenplay, and it pulls the rest of an otherwise good movie down into oblivion with its meandering trajectory.

A long and winding road leading nowhere, The Fields is a mish-mash of disconnected set pieces with no real plot. While the desaturated cinematography and moody design set a general tone of gloom, and much of the acting is solid, The Fields focuses on fragmented back story, rather than a beginning, a middle, and an end. There's no connection between Steven's parents' domestic disputes and Steven's meanderings around the farm. So why did the producers even follow that storyline? Of course, one could ask the same question about any aspect of this "mystery," and ultimately, about The Fields itself. 5 points for competence, but -2 for making me waste my time.

I usually don't write reviews to "counter" the writings of other critics, but I really feel that this movie deserves a better look than some people are giving it.

These days, people have a tendency to look up a movie and do a little reading about it before they watch it. This has pros and cons, the most significant con being that they see the words "drama" or "horror" and from that point on expect nothing but a drama or a horror. When they watch the movie and find that it does not conform itself to the labels, they complain.

Yes, this movie takes time to move, and yes you are not really sure where it's going, but boy oh boy does it ever make good at the end! The director and writers made the very excellent decision to bring in the terror at the last part of the film. This is the way it should be. THIS is how terror should be done. It's like an earthquake, hitting you when you least expect it, in a way you couldn't prepare for, knocking you off your feet. It doesn't need to make sense or "tie in" to anything else.

The first stretch of this film seems to be designed to put you off your guard, then hit you at the end. It works. It's effective. It gave me the chills. I would recommend watching it.