Dark Fields (2006)

If you want to read scathing reviews of the film Dark Fields, you’ll find no shortage at IMDb. On that site, the film carries an abysmal 2.4 average rating, as reviewers have not hesitated to dogpile on the 2006 horror flick. While Dark Fields may not be anything close to passable, not even reaching the hallowed so-bad-it’s-good status, it’s still a laudable low-budget horror effort, and a testament to what kind of film can be produced on a four-figure financial plan.

Dark Fields tells an accustomed story: five teens head off to a concert (band and genre are never specified) and get stranded in the country along the way. In Texas Chain Saw Massacre fashion, they encounter a deranged hick (whose motive is only ever hinted at) who then slaughters 60% of the cast. The editor clearly studied under the Ed Wood School of Film-Lengthening, as the viewer is forced to endure long scenes of cars proceeding down roads. With no real twists or turns in the plot, only holes, what we get is an exceedingly slow-paced slasher, making seventy minutes feel like three or four hours. Although the DVD sleeve promises an 80 minute runtime, ten minutes of this are taken up by a blooper reel interspersed within the credits. The real bloopers, however, can be found in the film proper, where boom mikes and camera operators are often quite conspicuous, and where the teens pay in American currency even though they’re clearly in Canada.

But Dark Fields is not totally unwatchable. Unlike the teens in many other slasher films, the members of this youthful assemblage are actually sort of likeable. Their accents are painfully Canadian, a nasally warble thick as maple syrup that turns every “out” into “oot.” Their vocabulary is filled with an aggressively regional patois, most notable in their repeated use of the term “ass-clown” as both noun and verb. Moreover, at least two of the teens are pocked with terrible acne. The verisimilitude is in-your-face, as these are not twenty-something Hollywood actors, but rather actual teens from small-city Canada.

Perhaps the most appealing of the cast members is Jenna Scott, who plays Taylor, the quasi-Final Girl. I don’t mean to lean too heavily on the male gaze in saying so, but she’s undeniably vulpine and, by the end, almost Valkyrie-esque. Moreover, hers is the apotheosis of a midriff. A mild spoiler alert is in order here before I report, with some regret, that there is no nudity in Dark Fields. Nonetheless, Jenna Scott’s midriff is so singularly lovely and so focally visible, it almost should count as honorary nudity. Her perpetually exposed torso may constitute one of the sexiest bare midriffs in filmic history. I defy all the other more vocal critics of Dark Fields to find a comelier lower-torso on a horror-film female lead. On account of that delicious strip of stomach, Dark Fields endures as a minor horror milestone.

By virtue of this agreeable cast, when you do make it to the credits and then sit through the runtime-padding gag reel, you smile and laugh along with players. Here, after all, are some average teens from an average place who managed to make a movie. Now, granted, that movie is far, far below average in quality. But it is still a movie, and no one can take that away from all parties involved. Perhaps it’s my own upbringing in rural North Dakota talking (as close as you can get to Canada without being Canadian, I suppose), but these rosy-cheeked, foggy-breathed teens remind you of people you went to school with—how they acquire their own hyper-localized patois and in-jokes, how they try to do all kinds of things to stave boredom. You feel a certain nostalgia for the teens in Dark Fields, because they could have been your friends. Watch the film five or six times, and, indeed, the cast starts to feel like your friends. Sure, the movie is execrable, but together, this ragtag, rural ensemble was able to see their project through, and on an admirably low budget at that. For this reason, I have no choice but to recommend Dark Fields. It won’t scare you, it won’t impress you, and it won’t entertain you, but nonetheless, you just might feel, even for a few fleeting moments, like you’re back with your high school friends trying to go somewhere. You just might end up smiling.