Horror As Folk: A Field in England Explained: Getting Weird Sorcery Right

There’s a platitude that gets passed around as a truism: If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. Unfortunately, that’s not always an option when you’re tasked with writing about movies.

It’s not actually that I can’t say anything nice about A Field in England. I can and will say many nice things about it. It’s more that the nice things I can say don’t seem sufficient to the challenge at hand. Over on Letterboxd, EmperorCupcake opted not to rate A Field in England because “‘drug trips put to film’ aren’t really my thing.” And I’m beginning to think that the same applies to me.

Of course, A Field in England is both more and maybe less than that summation implies. Ben Wheatley’s fourth feature is also probably his most experimental film to date. Shot in black-and-white and set during the English Civil War of the 17th century, the flick concerns a band of deserters thrown together by circumstance who are captured by an “alchemist” (perhaps more accurately a sorcerer) named O’Neill who is looking for treasure in the field of the title.

There are many things in A Field in England that work, even for me. Most of the actors are good, with Reece Shearsmith and Michael Smiley turning in particularly memorable performances. And there are moments that have stuck with me for years, ever since I first saw this in a theater more than a decade ago.

One is the first appearance of O’Neill, the other is a moment when O’Neill (Smiley) turns Whitehead (Shearsmith) into a human divining rod. Whitehead goes into O’Neill’s tent, we hear his inhuman screams, and when he emerges, now tied to the end of a rope, his posture and facial expression are genuinely horrifying, seared into my memory.

The problem is that, for every one of these moments – or truly funny bits of camaraderie between the various deserters – there are long stretches of experimental maneuvers that obviously work for many people, but which struck me, especially upon a second viewing, as film school nonsense.

Even leaving aside the kaleidoscopic effects and such, however, A Field in England was never going to be “for me.” It’s a movie that is concerned with the grit and grime of not only wartime (and personal hygiene) in the 17th century but of life in general; juxtaposing moments of transcendental horror or ecstasy with scenes of people taking a shit or having their genitals examined for STDs.

This is not an approach that is without merit, nor one that is incapable of winning me over. Other films and books have managed it, and it defines basically the entire oeuvre of someone like Jesse Bullington, whose books I have pretty unanimously enjoyed. But it’s never going to be my favorite, either, and A Field in England is no exception.

There is one thing, though, that A Field in England does better than just about any other movie I have ever seen, even if it does it entirely too seldom. That is its depiction of old-timey mysticism in action. In most movies, mysticism or occultism (whether real or bullshit) follows a pattern that mystics and occultists would like you to believe is true, one that goes from point A to point B in a relatively direct if not always explicable line.

The moments of mysticism or sorcery in A Field in England feel much more arbitrary. The scene that best underscores this is the aforementioned appearance of O’Neill. As the deserters tramp across the field, one among their number asks the others for a favor. Abruptly, there is an oddly decorated post driven into the ground, and a long length of thick rope which stretches out beyond the terminus of sight. All the men pull on the rope, which seems to pull back, dragging them across a line of mushrooms growing in the field. The rope wraps around the post. And then, suddenly, they have dragged O’Neill out from… somewhere, and there he is.

Does it make any sense? No. But does it feel like witnessing actual sorcery? Absolutely. It’s a moment strange and potent enough to almost carry the film all by itself.

Even among Ben Wheatley’s fans (among which I’m not sure I can realistically number myself), A Field in England is a divisive film. It seems to be a movie that people either love or hate. When I saw it in the theater a decade ago, I was one of only three people in attendance. Of those other two, one walked out in disgust when either the first or second penis showed up on screen. And while he was absolutely wrong about why he bailed, I can totally get giving up on A Field in England partway through. It’s a frustrating, stumbling movie that either works for you or it doesn’t.

But is it folk horror? Sure, in its way. I certainly can’t think of a place where it would fit better than among the other denizens of Severin’s All the Haunts Be Ours boxed set, which is where I watched it this second time, and where it shares a disc with the 1993 film Anchoress, which we’ll be discussing next time.