Movies
The Fields
“Tom Mattera’s ‘The Fields’ feels like a movie with good intentions. A lot of time when you’re watching low-budget horror you get the sinking feeling that the genre choice was predicated on how little respect and effort any particular financier has to put into it. This movie feels like a personal labor of love. And unfortunately it’s just not much good.”
Tom Mattera’s The Fields feels like a movie with good intentions. A lot of time when you’re watching low-budget horror you get the sinking feeling that the genre choice was predicated on how little respect and effort any particular financier has to put into it. This movie feels like a personal labor of love. And unfortunately it’s just not much good.
Dropped off to live with his grandparents in rural wherever while his mom (Tara Reid) gets her life together, Steven (Joshua Ormond) begins to encounter some vague creepiness when he repeatedly ventures into the cornfields just outside their house. And that’s just the problem, the threat level for the film never rises above ‘vague’.
Sure the plot is cohesive and the characters are actually well-defined, but there’s never any feeling of jeopardy. You’re never truly engaged. The whole thing is defiantly flat. And the decision not to expand the palette into something truly threatening kills the movie.
While Joshua Ormond’s Steven makes for a milquetoast protagonist, Cloris Leachman truly hams hit up as his grandmother, Gladys. Chicken meat stuck in her teeth, being accused by her husband of not farting enough, farting in bed later for laughs. It’s not the definition of appealing. Perhaps her performance is some kind septuagenarian feminist manifesto. Unfortunately it does nothing but establish that Steven enjoys his crazy grandmother who encourages him to use the word “colored” rather than the “n-word” slightly more than Tara Reid.
As far as Tara Reid goes, she actually looks reasonably healthy here. Can she act yet? Not really. But she might live and that’s what counts. It’s nice to see her seemingly pulling it together.
So, not to be rude, but this is the kind of stuff that comes to mind when I think about The Fields. It’s not insanely awful or anything, and I’m left thinking about something. Unfortunately I’m just not thinking about how much I liked it.
A contemporary reimagining of H.P. Lovecraft’s short story Herbert West: Reanimator is on the way, and Deadline has unveiled the first look at the new Herbert West and the pathologist drawn to his orbit.
Adam Simon (The Haunting in Connecticut, “Salem”) and Tim Metcalfe (The Haunting in Connecticut, Kalifornia) penned the script. The original screenplay and storyline come from Jade Sandberg Wallace.
Michael Grossman (“The Originals”, “Pretty Little Liars”) directs.
The new images introduce star Joseph Morgan (“Vampire Diaries“), who plays “brilliant surgeon and scientist Herbert West, who is obsessed with creating a serum to reanimate the dead.” Katie Cassidy (Speed Demon) stars opposite as the pathologist with a troubled past who joins his efforts.
Together, they prove that conquering death may be the ultimate sin against life itself.
The film’s official synopsis: “As a child, Herbert West watches his father Peter reanimate his dead mother Judith in a secret basement lab — only for Judith to mortally wound Peter and nearly kill Herbert before Peter shoots her. The trauma leaves its mark on Herbert, but so does one final image: his mother’s finger, twitching after death. Thirty years later, Herbert West is a brilliant, secretive surgeon still chasing his father’s obsession.
“Pathologist Kate Locke arrives in town and is drawn into his orbit — first through a spark at a hospital fundraiser, then through his secret lab, where he reveals a serum capable of reanimating severed tissue. Kate, hiding a dark past of her own, is thrilled rather than horrified, and moves into West’s mansion to work alongside him. Their early experiments on a cadaver succeed only briefly. West concludes that dead tissue is the problem — they need something fresher.”
Supporting cast includes Scott Aiello, Ira J Amyx, Randall Newsome, Emma Reinagal, James D. Bryce, Kathryn A Bentley, Jack Lancaster, Amy Holland Pennell, John Pierson, Mindy Shaw, Eric Dean White, Tristan Wilder Hallet, Adrienne Lamping, Aaron Crippen, and Drew Patterson.
Makeup artist Jeff Lewis (“Star Trek: Voyager,” “Star Trek: Enterprise”) and cousin Roger Lewis are heading the production via their newly established Woodlake Entertainment.
Lovecraft’s short story, first serialized in Home Brew magazine in 1922, is the first among his works to mention the fictional Miskatonic University. It was most famously adapted into a 1985 horror movie from Stuart Gordon, starring Jeffrey Combs as Herbert West.
Herbert West: Reanimator is set in Alton, Illinois, where production is now underway.
Herbert West: Reanimator. Photo credit: Matt Lief Anderson
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