AngelainAL This movie wasted over an hour and a half of my life that I will never get back. When I'm laying on my death bed, I will think back to all the things I could have done with that time. Yes, it's that bad. I got sucked in and really thought it was going to turn out to be a decent movie. A little less than half way in, I figured out that I had been duped. I wanted to write a review to help others avoid the same mistake, therefore I felt obligated to watch it all so my review would be honest.

The_Dead_See 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.

jet66 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.

ghost_paint I don't know that I'd call it a horror movie per se, but it still creeped me out in ways I didn't expect. The acting was spot on, with totally believable characters (Cloris Leachman in particular was a stand out) and something about the rural farmhouse setting, the abandoned cornfield that is to be avoided at all costs, the town that is little more than a ghost town complete with Manson Family-esque squatters living in buses and abandoned buildings, all combined to give the movie an unnerving feel of isolation. Ordinary everyday scenes become twisted without you even being aware why you have the feeling that things were somehow "off." If you're looking for a classic horror movie, you might be somewhat bored during parts of this movie, but for a psychological movie that screws with your mind, it was superb, and the fact that it was based on a true story adds to the creepy vibe. Give it a chance; I recommend it 100%.