A What in Where?

A Field in England (2013) is a Ben Wheatley movie, and therefore, pretty strange. It's a very stripped down historical psychedelic mystical horror movie - possibly the only one of its kind, and therefore, the best.

It's set in a field in England, of course, during a battle in the Civil War. Our protagonist, Reece Shearsmith, is running away. A commander is trying to kill him for deserting, but he is killed by Ryan Pope, a soldier. They join up with another deserter, Peter Ferdinando, who is seeing to his dead friend (named Friend, played by Richard Glover). When Cutler suggests they go to an inn he spotted for some beer, they all come along, including Friend, who has got better.

On the way we learn that Shearsmith is a servant to a powerful alchemist, while Friend is a fatalistic idiot. He is very Baldrick from Black Adder. He has figured out what God is punishing us for: Everything.

They stop in a field (in England) and Pope cooks up a meal of mushrooms. Everyone takes them except Shearsmith, who is fasting. Then the hallucinations start. The movie is in black and white, and the hallucinations are odd close-ups, fast cutting, whirling cameras and so forth. Simple and effective. Pope hands out shovels and orders everyone to dig - there is treasure buried somewhere. The inn with the beer - that was a lie!

There's a long scene with the whole crew pulling on a rope, and you finally find that there is a wizard on the other end, Michael Smiley. Possibly he was underground, looking for the treasure. They force Shearsmith to take the mushrooms, then torture him offscreen, to force him to use his skills to find the treasure. 

I'll skip to end, which has a free-for-all shootout similar to Free Fire. Friend is killed at least once more, and so is pretty much everyone else. 

It's an odd movie - black-and-white and very cheap (it looks like) with only five or six characters, no sets, no special effects. It has a mix of very historical feel (Shearsmith is like a slave to his master, but considers that a proper state of affairs) and modernity - shrooms, for example. It is also violent and horrible, yet also comical, with a long toilet joke (without the toilet, because it all takes place in a field) (in England). Not sure we exactly enjoyed it, but glad we saw it.