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"Dark Fields" DVD
I don't believe I ever
want to see the barrel that Lions Gate had to scrape the bottom
of to dredge up this roaring suckfest.
So what we have here
plotwise is now what you'd call much of a plot at all: a bunch of
idiot kids with the collective intelligence of a jar of mayonnaise--an
empty jar at that--can't seem to manage to get to a mindless rock
concert, so they wind up getting attacked by a raging hillbilly
instead. Texas Chainsaw Knockoff, aisle two!
First, "Dark Fields"
has a positively screwed up opening sequence, where we waver between
a hot chick jogging and getting changed and some kind of farmyard
scene going on. What exactly we're going for at this point as a
farmer kills a rooster and a hot chick makes herself a belly shirt
is totally, unequivocally, beyond me.
I swear, this chick is
there for like one class. Seriously--eight minutes in and she's
already off to the concert--one whole class. I think the kids in
"Beverly Hills 90210" had a more demanding curriculum
than "Dark Fields" can muster. Maybe if they actually
got her a couple classes she might've had brains in her head sufficient
to beating back an axe-toting crazed farmer.
And can we have the "I've
got to piss!" argument a few more times in the first fifteen
minutes? Back and forth for like five minutes is some variant on
"I've got to piss!" and "No! Not until we get to
the gas station!" for five solid minutes. Considering this
thing is only eighty minutes long to begin with, it's not like they've
got a whole lot of time to waste, and they're certainly not taking
advantage of what time they actually have available.
Amateurish in the extreme,
with godawful effects, plot holes of depth measurable in hectares,
lousy dialogue (I actually heard the phrase "cheese 'n' rice"
at one point--you can also have a lively drinking game around how
many times you hear the phrase "ass-clown"!), a plot so
cookie cutter that it could describe any of a hundred movies released
in the last twenty years, and with acting so unnaturally awkward
and stilted that it's the cinematic equivalent of Baron Samedi in
a foot race, "Dark Fields" isn't the kind of movie I'd
want to run into in a dark alley. Or in a well-lit video store,
for that matter.
And then, for some reason,
you get about a quarter of the way through, and a car horn honks.
I reran it three times just to make sure it wasn't outside my house
and three times, a car horn. No one seems to notice or care that
they're out in the middle of nowhere with a car horn honking, so
I'm gonna go out on a limb and ask:
What kind of pathologically
screwed up post-production did you people do that you couldn't edit
out a horn in the middle of dialogue?
There's one particular
scene in this debacle that shows the true nature of this parade
of godawful beautifully. Watch as Zach, one of our main characters,
can't manage to finish his own joke because he's--laughing? I guess
it's laughing; it really sounds more like he's sputtering or trying
to play some kind of imaginary brass instrument.
And then, pegging Zach
as a lead pipe cinch candidate to take home a Darwin Award, he sticks
his hand into some unidentifiable bit of farm machinery and dares
anyone, especially the missing member of the group he's looking
for, to turn on the device. And of course, the device engages, taking
his hand and ostensibly killing him via the simple expedient of
massive blood loss.
Taunting anything in
a horror movie--dumber than the rocket-fuel-powered car.
The ending features the
new gold standard for idiocy in film as the killer farmer decides
he's going to hide in a meat freezer that can be locked from the
outside. Yet despite this baffling show of insanity, neither of
our surviving characters seem willing or able to capitalize on this.
The special features
include Spanish subtitles, English closed captions, and trailers
for "Hard Candy", "See No Evil", "An American
Haunting", "Stephen King's Desperation", "Are
You Scared?" and "The Feeding".
All in all, how this
movie got picked up for distribution is totally beyond me. An amateur
wonder that reminds me of a bunch of kids playing with a camcorder
down on the farm, "Dark Fields" is the runt of the litter.
Dark Fields
*
DVDDirected by Mark McNabb, Allan Randall
Written by Allan Randall
Starring Jenna Scott, Lindsay Dell, Brian Austin Jr., Eric Phillion
Produced by Mark McNabb, Allan Randall
80 mins
NR
2006
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