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A Field in England, 2013
An apprentice named Whitehead (Reece Shearsmith) is fleeing from his master in the midst of a battle in the Civil War. Stumbling into the company of three soldiers, Cutler (Ryan Pope), Jacob (Peter Ferdinando), and Friend (Richard Glover), the group wanders until stumbling across a strange sorcerer named O'Neil (Michael Smiley) who is determined to use Whitehead to find a treasure buried somewhere in the field.
Psychological horror is a tricky thing, because in the wrong hands it can devolve into a series of seemingly unconnected visual sequences that the creator thought would be cool. Wheatley (from whom I've seen Kill List, Sightseers, High Rise and Free Fire) has a very strong grasp on strangeness of tone. Good psychological horror feels like it's telling a story with the emotions it evokes with the imagery, and that's the case here.
There's also plenty of Wheatley's dark humor (though credit also to writer Amy Jump), such as in a sequence where a dying man asks his companions to deliver a message to his wife, only for us to see that
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The black-and-white looks very nice, and a scene late in the film that gets into kaleidoscopic hallucinatory sequences is both beautiful and menacing, especially a shot in which O'Neil stands against a tree, flapping his cape like some malevolent butterfly. It's controlled chaos and a great sequence.
Definitely recommended.
A Field in England, 2013
An apprentice named Whitehead (Reece Shearsmith) is fleeing from his master in the midst of a battle in the Civil War. Stumbling into the company of three soldiers, Cutler (Ryan Pope), Jacob (Peter Ferdinando), and Friend (Richard Glover), the group wanders until stumbling across a strange sorcerer named O'Neil (Michael Smiley) who is determined to use Whitehead to find a treasure buried somewhere in the field.
Psychological horror is a tricky thing, because in the wrong hands it can devolve into a series of seemingly unconnected visual sequences that the creator thought would be cool. Wheatley (from whom I've seen Kill List, Sightseers, High Rise and Free Fire) has a very strong grasp on strangeness of tone. Good psychological horror feels like it's telling a story with the emotions it evokes with the imagery, and that's the case here.
There's also plenty of Wheatley's dark humor (though credit also to writer Amy Jump), such as in a sequence where a dying man asks his companions to deliver a message to his wife, only for us to see that
WARNING: spoilers below
the message is that he hates his wife, set fire to her father's barn as revenge for making them marry, and has been cheating on her with her sister
The black-and-white looks very nice, and a scene late in the film that gets into kaleidoscopic hallucinatory sequences is both beautiful and menacing, especially a shot in which O'Neil stands against a tree, flapping his cape like some malevolent butterfly. It's controlled chaos and a great sequence.
Definitely recommended.