Back in 2019 I gave a lecture at the Ann Radcliffe Conference entitled “Corn is the Grain of Horror,” arguing that if you see corn in a horror film, it is all over for most of the characters. The second someone wanders into the stalks, faster than you can say “He Who Walks Behind the Rows,” there’s a sinister scarecrow, demented farmer, angry spirit, or a monster of some kind. From The Dark Secret of Harvest Home to the Children of the Corn franchise to Adam Cesare’s 2021 Bram Stoker Award-winning novel Clown in a Cornfield and dozens, if not hundreds, of scarecrow-based horror films, corn is by far America’s most horrifying grain and cornfields are a place of sheer evil and terror. Which brings us to Escape the Field.

The premise is simple enough: six strangers wake up in a cornfield not knowing each other or how any of them got there. Nobody has any of their possessions, but they each do have one item: a gun, a knife, matches, a lantern, a compass, and a canteen. The field appears to be infinite, and there also seems to be some kind of thing/monster/evil force wandering in the field attempting to hunt them. It is at this moment they (and the viewer) realize they are in the world’s largest escape room of a sort. The items and signs in the field are clues to be interpreted and, if done correctly, they can escape the field. The rest of the film unspools solving the mystery of what the field is, what the monster is, and why they were all brought there.

Okay, fair enough. Perhaps not the most original of plots, but there’s still a great deal of potential as just because something has been done before does not mean a new version cannot explore similar terrain to better or different effect. Paranoia, suspicion, and lack of trust all run deep in the group. Everyone is suspected of being in on it, whatever it is: government experiment, military experiment, strange cult experiment, etc. Of course one cannot have a sinister corn field film without having sinister scarecrows (see: hundreds of sinister scarecrow films), and Escape the Field has many – they are part of the escape room. Unravel the scarecrows, find the clues, escape the field.

Escape the Field had potential, but cannot overcome some of its basic flaws. The characters are fairly one dimensional, which is a shame because it’s a talented cast. If one person says the group should do something, many of them accept it as a fait accompli – “We don’t have a choice,” gets said a lot when, no, they have many choices. The actors are game, but they’re left without much to do aside from play dialogue tag with slight backstory. There’s no character with an actual arc. It’s a missed opportunity since more could have been done with complicated backstories and arcs, as opposed to forming alliances for no particular reason. I was intellectually interested in how the situation worked out, sure, but I had no emotional investment in the characters.

The CG effects are also not particularly strong, which is also disappointing, as there are some solid jump scares. The cornfield is not used nearly as effectively as a site for paranoia, uncertainly and dread. For a better example of how to make cornfields scary with complex, rounded characters, see William Wesley’s 1988 film Scarecrows. Escape the Field tries for the same atmosphere and affect, but sadly never quite gets there.

5 out of 10