Dark Fields (2009)

Overrated and overhyped

The acting in this movie is really good.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

Set across three generations of inhabitants of the small town of Perseverance, comes a story not done justice by the flimsy direction and wooden acting. This eerie and suspenseful tale about a village haunted and cursed by wickedness contaminating their rain, ends up ringing hollow despite some good cast choices. Rain the purifier becomes the touch of death. The whole event is initiated in the late 1900s, as the village, led by Clive Jonis (played by the ever-charismatic genre old-timer David Carradine) enters into a pact with a devilish shaman. This in turns has bloody repercussions many years in the future as human sacrifices are necessitated by the need for rain.Inside the story lurks some great potential with a creepy top-hat taking centre stage, while Tiren Jhames as the ominous Mr Saul brings the beast delivering a superb character. However, most screen times is wasted on some truly appalling child acting, who one-by-one spiral the movie into oblivion, leaving just singular moments and short-lived spine-crawling elements. Surprisingly disjointed it also features superior technical qualities depending on specific sub-stories, with acting, lighting and overall feel superior during the turn of the century story thread.The story also becomes undone by the basic premise, which suggests that longing for life would corrupt the soul to such an extent, that mothers and fathers would willing dispose of their own kin. The concept itself seems so far-flung, thus only underlining the low production qualities, probably forced by budget limitations.

There is a very good Horror/Supernatural Movie in here somewhere. It has excellent Cinematography, some eerie Make-Up effects, and a feel of the unreal. But in its ambitious attempt to tell a Story spanning three Generations of a cursed Community, something got submerged.It is unnecessarily muddled and confusing and with some attentive Editing and a different structure, this one could have been a real Sleeper. Presented here, it is laborious, much too long, and the pacing is just too slow. It is worth a watch for Fans of Horror and low budget experiments. There is some real Talent at work here behind the Camera, but its the Composition and flow that defeats this good try. This is some heavy going and is intriguing, but could be more homogenized.

So said this character in this cheese-ball from hell.'Yes, my dear,' MUCH worse - if you sit and waste ANY time watching this poorly acted. Ridiculously plotted nightmare.There's no words to describe how dreadful this is.In a nutshell: Town has poor (pun?) rain.So, they sacrifice kids. Evil spirit, then more rain probs, then the current residents of this rain-challenged place has the rain - and evil - probs themselves.One simple idea that's NEVER thought of: MOVE!!!This is one move where the sound-cues - so important, but, so rarely noticed in most films - are on prominent display - and I'm not saying that in a kind way.The only way you 'sense' bad things, are from the 'ominous' music: creepy tinkling on a piano, or 'jug-bottle whistling sounds - all the cliché's are on PROMINENT display in this muck.Not ONE of the people in this (other than Keith Carradine) , has any sort of a career - before they made this, and, I'd seriously doubt, if they ever would.It's like the director went and got...friends-of-friends-of-friends together, and said; 'hey! You ever thought about being in a movie?' A typical scene of 'ominous approaching bad;' the girl, who only moments earlier was sweet, fun, wearing white, shows up all in black - eye makeup, et al. Then, her mobile rings. Tight close-up of mobile, while 'ominous chord' plays. I'm only guessing here, but, I think I found the TRUE reason Mr. Carradine passed away - this was coming out.

There is something i don't understand about this film - it appears as if a good film is interspersed with scenes from a bad film, and by that i mean not good and bad writing together; allow me to explain.The Rain is a film which contains three parallel stories, in three different times, all concerning the same plot element; the first one, in the early 1900s (with David Carradine lead) is nicer, better direction, better lighting, nice post-prod and altogether a decent production, while the second, seems to have been shot at a later date, when the funds ran out, and the production values are much worse. The female lead in the second story is also much worse than any of the supporting.But on with the review.The Rain (or Dark Fields, as i know it) is the story of a curse, brought about by the magic of an Indian shaman when he is asked to provide rainfall for a drought-stricken town... human sacrifice is a necessity of course, and thus the curse, and the three stories - the first drought and the pact with the shaman, the curse later in the years and the revelation of the need of sacrifices to a daughter by her cursed parents, and the continuation in the present day. The curse is personified by the shaman's top'hat, which is a nice touch, and The Rain doesn't lack a good many nice psychological touches.This film has many good points, the first of which is a very creepy story and some decent acting; there is also a modicum of special effects, but again, some good, some truly abysmal, but its best feature is the writing. Though it is unrelated, there is a lot in this film that screams "cthulhu mythos", and in my book that is a good thing. In the end, what let down this film is not the effort, or the talent, but the money - of which i must assume they didn't have enough of, as The Rain would have truly benefited a lot from better production, casting and photography; however, my opinion is still that a vote of four is way too low - sure, the end result isn't stellar, mostly from the project being too ambitious (at almost two hours long, the film still feels as if it should have been made longer - perhaps as a two part TV production), but as a nice Gothic-horror story, and with it being very watchable, i say ..Final vote 6/10 - too ambitious, could have been lots better, but horror lovers (and mythos fans) shouldn't miss it