I'll be honest, seeing an opening credit sequence that lists A Film By Daniel Iske, Director Of Photography Daniel Iske, Music By James Iske, Produced By Wendy Iske, gives me pause. It makes me think that Mr. Iske wanted to make a movie, so he got his brother to do the sound and his mom to pay for it. It doesn't exactly give me high hopes for the quality of what I'm about to see. Thankfully it's written by someone not named Iske.
As I anticipated, the budget is low and the acting is...well it's as good as it needs to be. The problem with the whole thing is that every aspect of the movie is only nearly competent. The story is not that engaging, and the majority of the cast is adequate. Thankfully, Melanie Gillis as Cheryl, who has to carry most of the dramatic moments, is good enough to do so. On the other end, Sarah Wald as Ashley, well let's just say she's very pretty. Most attempts at emotion seem to be a major task for this poor girl. Luckily, she's so bad that her performance turns into a bright spot and gives the film a level of unintended humor.
The story is sort of straight forward. Trent is doing his thesis on soil or some shit, and he and a bunch of friends are spending the week on an old farm in the middle of nowhere doing research and collecting soil samples or something. The bad news is that the land was home to an Indian, I mean Native American, slaughter some centuries ago. There's also something about a mother and a son and the son is illegitimate or something, I dunno. The mystery and the back story was a bit verbose and I honestly didn't give nearly as big a shit about it as the writer did.
The look is decent but it's clearly fairly amateurish. There are a few technical mishaps that should never happen, such as when a diary is discovered and some shots show it as handwritten, but then others show that it's clearly typed. This happens more than once.
The action and gore is decent and as good as it needs to be. I'm sensing a theme here. The girls are all attractive and scantily clad but there's no real nudity.
Not engaging enough of a story to overcome it's deficiencies, Fields Of The Dead isn't a horrible movie, but there's no reason to go out of your way to see it. Maybe replant and see if next years crop is any better.
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