I hate waking up in a cornfield with no memory of getting there. So, right away, I was a little reluctant to proceed with Escape the Field, a succinctly titled puzzler from English filmmaker Emerson Moore.
Six people regain consciousness amongst an endless jungle of corn. They’re each equipped with a single item (lantern, matches, water, knife, etc), and together must reason their way out of ear shot.
The field is loaded with booby traps, and there is a killer shrewdly disguised as corn, lurking about and making life miserable for everyone.
Sam (Jordan Clare Robbins), who is clearly the brains of this bunch, quickly devours clues and discovers an evolving map that presumably leads to a less starchy environment.
Joining Sam on her doomed patrol, is Ryan (Shane West, in the Adam Baldwin role), a seething, guilt-ridded soldier; Tyler (Theo Rossi, in the Robert Beltran role), a smiling divorced father who develops a crush on Sam, and Cameron (Tahirah Sharif), an emotionally unstable British intelligence agent.
There are two other people in their little posse, but they don’t do anything except die.
After dodging Corn Man and and assorted deadly pitfalls, Sam begins to see a pattern. Someone is obviously watching their progress through the deadly gauntlet.
But who? And what do they want?
Don’t hold your breath waiting for answers. As more than one person remarks during Escape the Field, “there’s no way out.”
This becomes apparent at around the 30-minute mark, leaving another 58 minutes of futile floundering in the field.
Writer-director Emerson Moore surely should have known that we’d get fed up with all this friggin’ corn.
In the case of Escape the Field, I would stick with the old horror movie adage, “Steer clear of the Moore.”
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