31 Days, 31 Horror Reviews Day 23: A Field in England

2013.

One thing that is interesting about horror as a genre is how vague its boundaries are. A western is a very specific collection of images and tropes (e.g. the cowboy, the desert, the duel) that must either be followed or at least acknowledged. Horror cinema, meanwhile, can be just about anything as long as it is scary – at least that’s the definition I use. Looking back at the movies I have covered, is there anything Anaconda has in common with Black Swan? Those are also two films I’ve received comments on asking if they’re "really horror". They could very well actually be thrillers, a genre that is even more poorly defined. Maybe we do not need strict taxonomies for genre discussions; I won’t be solving these questions today. Anyway, with the genre question in mind, we come to a movie that even I hesitate to call "horror", that being A Field in England, directed by Ben Wheatley.

The question then becomes, if A Field in England is not a horror movie, what is it? Well, that is itself a difficult question because I don't really know A Field in England is. It is definitely a movie, I know that much. I will not be able to confirm much more beyond that.

This is the most experimental movie yet, a film utterly uninterested in telling a traditional narrative. Wheatley filmed A Field in England in black and white. which is the least trippy decision made during its production. Events seem to play out in linear fashion, but then characters return from the dead with no explanation. Hours pass but seemingly no time moves, the day never turns to dusk. The film is broken up into various “chapters”, between which the principal players all pause to stage dramatic poses. It's this sudden turn into deep formalism that breaks the realism film making usually relies upon. The result is more uncomfortable and psychedelic than scary.

A Filed in England is set entirely in a field in England, as promised. This field is specifically back during the English Civil War sometime in the mid-1600s. We open on a bearded dainty man, Whitehead (Reece Shearsmith), pushing through a dense thicket to escape a skirmish we hear off-screen. We never see anything beyond this vast field. Whitehead joins a small band of deserters who give up on the war to follow the murderous Cutler (Ryan Pope) to a promised nearby Ale House. With Whitehead is a brash hedonist, Jacob (Peter Ferdinando) and a witless singer only known as “Friend” (Richard Glover). All four men find themselves trapped by Whitehead’s Irish rival, O’Neil (Michael Smiley), a dark conjurer certain there is treasure hidden in the field. What follows then is a battle of magic, good and evil, and hallucinations driven by mushrooms.

There are plenty of odd episodes within A Field in England. The four men in the party find themselves pulling on a long rope, actually losing the tug of war, but then somehow pull O’Neil out from some pit that we cannot see. The event simply makes no sense no matter how it is framed. Whitehead is at first piously fasting, but then has mushrooms and beer poured down his throat. By the end, he is chowing down on shrooms, conjuring hurricane-force winds with their power. The wicked O’Neil tortures Whitehead to help him summon the treasure inside a tent. During which, we hear only the painful screams. When Whitehead emerges, he has briefly gone manic, with a Jokerfied smile and limbs pointing at jolly angles.

Then there is the huge black terrifying planet that Whitehead imagines falling towards the field. Or Jacob’s health decline seemingly from poisoning nettles in the balls, which then inexplicably improves. O’Neil enslaves the other men to dig for his treasure, only to find bones in the pit – which is where Whitehead buries some corpses later. Whitehead pukes out polished stones with Germanic runes written on them.

I really have no idea what is going on in A Field in England. It is less a narrative than some kind of endlessly repeating purgatory. Five men trapped in a kind of endless war, firing their 17th century muskets at each other, only to rise from the dead moments later. Maybe it is a kind of punishment afterlife for these souls. Maybe it’s some sort of extended allegory for the English Civil War, with all its rises as falls, including the Stuart Dynasty returning from the grave. Maybe it’s a play on lost pagan rituals from pre-Christian England. Maybe it is all these things. Whatever it is, it is very creepy. Metaphor, allegory, whatever, you never feel quite safe watching this movie.

This year Ben Wheatley made another movie set in the English countryside, also starring Reece Shearsmith, In the Earth. That one is set in current day, so timely it even acknowledges the current Covid pandemic. That’s more of a call-back to Seventies folk horror. But both films are about scientifically-minded men trapped by hallucinations and mushrooms, along with bloody battles for control even while they’re utterly helpless compared to the forces of nature. It is definitely a sister piece to A Field in England. Also, both films end in extremely experimental sequences of flashing lights and rapid cuts to create confusion. (Big Warning: do not see either if you have light sensitivity problems.)

As to what all this is saying, who knows, again. There’s some message of the power of the wilderness defeating science, ritual, and even religion. Both films are very well-made and brilliantly acted. A Field in England is a great movie, even if only appreciated as a kind of Theater of the Absurd drama. Maybe simply breaking all conventions, even that of narrative and genre, can be a kind of horror in of itself. However, I cannot much help you with this movie beyond that.

I don’t have a fucking clue what The Lighthouse was doing either.

Next time we travel to 2014, the year of Ebola looking like amateur shit compared to what’s coming down the line, the police violence in Ferguson looking like amateur shit compared to what’s coming down the line, and our next movie, Goodnight Mommy.