There are a number of reasons why people say a certain horror movie is bad. Maybe the movie wasn’t scary, maybe it was silly, maybe it bordered on torture porn, or maybe it was extremely offensive. And of course, there are the bad horror movies that are so bad that they’re classics.

The movie I’m here to talk to you about is, in fact, the worst horror movie ever. None of the above reasons have anything to do with this movie, except it being not scary. But the lack of scariness is not what makes this movie so bad. There are tons of bad movies out there that aren’t scary, but none of them are as bad as this.

The film is DARK FIELDS (working title was FARMER BROWN) and what makes it the worst horror movie ever is the fact that it takes horror, and breaks it. This movie is horrible, messed-up, lousy, and offers you nothing except broken horror. In order to explain just how broken a horror movie can get, I’m going to take you along for an in-depth analysis of the movie from beginning to end so that you will see why this movie is terrible. So without any further ado . . .

The first problem you will encounter with DARK FIELDS will happen before you even pop the dvd in. On the cover of the dvd box you will see this: [link]

The problem with the cover? The only thing on the cover that shows up in the actual film is the house. This looks like a typical teen slasher flick but the girl with the flashlight, the guy with the hook, the fields, are NOT in the movie.

But let’s continue on. The oversight isn’t that bad, and DARK FIELDS wouldn’t be the only bad horror film guilty of this. And for all you know, this could be an about decent Grade-B flick right? So put the dvd in and press play and get ready for the dullest introductions to a main character and the villain you will ever see. A teenage girl out jogging in the middle of the day, along with the scary villain of the movie going around his daily routine on the farm (of course you don’t see the farmer’s face, or even his upper half). The woman jogs home and the serial farmer “brutally” beheads a chicken, the chicken’s “blood” splatters against the wall and you get the title screen.

The lead girl (Taylor is the character’s name) runs to school, nearly late for class. Indeed class is just starting when she comes “barging” into the classroom and it is here where you’ll see the best acting you’ll find in this movie. Taylor runs in, stumbles, and drops her books on the floor. Now that’s what the character does, NOT the actress. What the actress does is step forward, DROP DOWN ON ONE KNEE, and TOSSES her books. (Speaking of which, this is apparently an English class, yet she has textbooks for Biology and Social Studies.)

Class resumes with nothing happening in the scene except one movie extra asking Taylor if she’s going to the concert. As the students are working on their assignments we hear dark gloomy music for absolutely no reason and then the bell rings. Taylor goes out to her locker and we meet the other four main characters: her boyfriend Josh, Justine, Justine’s boyfriend Zack, and Drew. All of them are going to take Josh’s car to the concert.

Let me just pause here to say that the characters look . . . well, awful. I’m not one to pick on people for how they look, but NOTHING has been done to make any of these characters look presentable. They’re obviously wearing their own clothes, no makeup, hair is just there. There’s nothing to make them look attractive (girls OR boys) and no reason that you’d want to look at them even though they’re the main characters. Taylor is the worst. She looks like a cross between Michael Jackson and some greasy Barbie doll. I hate to say it, but the characters just look bad to terrible. They all are.

Back to the movie, Taylor goes off with her friends, with her father looking concerned (believable, too, but I think this is the actress’s dad, so I don’t think this counts as “good acting” because it’s natural for him).

They drive off into the night, with Zack complaining that he has to pee. Drew tells him he can step out and pee when they come across a gas station, right as they actually PASS a gas station. After a while the car runs out of gas. You would think that if the concert they were going to was so far, that they’d have an extra can of gas, but I guess not.

They sit around and spend a few minutes cursing and calling each other bitches (regardless of gender and regardless if it was directed towards their boy/girl firend). Right up ahead there is a creepy house, and a farm with gas tanks for tractors. Drew goes and gets gas, leaves money on the tank, and walks out of the movie. Literally, we don’t see him again. He doesn’t die, he’s just GONE.

They others go to search for him leaving Justine back waiting in the car. Now you would think that, 20 minutes into the film, we’re finally going to have our first death. This is not the case. We just have her sit in the car, looking creeped out as her face gets flooded by the headlights of moving and parked cars.

Wait, wasn’t this road abandoned? Eh, whatever. So Justine gets scared and runs and joins the other inside the abandoned house. They split up (boys with their girls) and don’t hold your breath: the first death isn’t to come for a while.

Justine and Zack explore a disgusting bathroom and it is here, where there’s a window to the side of the screen with sunlight coming in AT NIGHT, that we have the most inane piece of dialogue ever spoken in a horror movie. Justine looks at the bathroom cabinet and says, “Now, this. This is something we could work with. You know, um, top shelf: face products . . . um, middle shelf: toiletries . . . um, (unintelligible) perfumes on the bottom, *car honks out on the ABANDONED road* all stuck in between there.”

We’re not even thirty minutes into the movie, folks. And we have about fifty minutes of movie left.

Josh and Taylor are checking out the basement of the house (where the windows still show daytime outside). It’s also daytime upstairs as Justine and Zack investigate a bedroom.

A bedroom . . . could this be a scene where they actually do it? Oh my, Justine’s just taken off her coat and is rubbing her stomach seductively! And there’s a hot beat playing, so there’s no way this can’t be going where it seems to be headed. Get ready for sexually explicit details as Justine . . . grabs her coat back?

“Yeah right, Zack. Like I’d ever do it here! No way.”

Bummer. Maybe in a future scene? (Ha ha. AS IF. Read on.)

Josh and Taylor are just about finished in the basement (searching for Drew, not having sex), when Zack “scares” the both of them.

They then head off and search the barn and then split up once more. Josh and Taylor get spooked by a horse. Justine and Zack go looking around in the other stalls which hold pigs and cows.

You know, I thought this place was abandoned. Who’s feeding all the animals? Eh, anyway… they quickly think that Drew (or perhaps Josh or Taylor since Drew has, as I said, left the film) is trying to scare them. To test this, Zack willingly sticks his hand in some kind of farm auger and dares Josh to turn it on. Of course it flicks on and Justine screams as her boyfriend DIES from a brutal hand mangling. Yes, hand mangling with fake blood and everything.

Switch from this moment of terror to Josh and Taylor who are messing around in a hayloft where we are finally treated to what the director apparently thinks is a “steamy” sex scene.

Josh and Taylor hug with clothes on (no clothes come off except Taylor’s shirt) and all the while we listen to some country band playing. And that’s all you’re getting when it comes to hot steamy scenes. Sorry. So let’s check back on Justine. Surely she’s gotten over crying over her boyfriend’s tragic death.

Hmm . . . she has but she’s now incapacitated after a stack of hay that’s half her size falls on her head. Must’ve had several bricks in that thing. Let’s go back to our lovebirds. They’ve exited the barn and are now checking around the gas pumps. (Yes, yes, why weren’t the gas pumps the first place they looked? Well, I don’t know.) And even though Drew filled up a gas can, it’s mysteriously empty. And the pin has been removed from the gas pump meaning they can’t get gas. The two enter the tool shed looking for a pin when out of nowhere . . . the killer stabs Josh in the heart with a giant rusty nail. This is done in slow motion but not very well, because instead of the actually stabbing slowing down, it’s Taylor’s scream.

The end result is that we see Taylor scream “NOOOOOOOOOOO!” like Darth Vader right before Josh’s demise at the hands of this crazed killer. (Whom, I forgot to mention, is played by the movie director.)

Taylor runs outside and gets slapped around a little bit by our killer. Justine shows up and saves her by bonking the dude with a shovel (which sounds like she just tapped the thing gently against the gas pump) and the guy’s out cold. The two girls run off into one of the buildings where they find a small room full of newspaper clippings. Note the small red handheld light hanging in the corner.

Taylor picks a newspaper article and starts reading with the help of Justine’s flashlight, but for some reason down in the bottom right corner, the red light floats into view being held by a disembodied hand. Stop asking why. These questions will never be explained.

The article speaks about two teens murdering a family (the Brown family) and stealing gas, with the only survivor being their son Clayton.

Yes, that’s our crazed killer. Farmer Clayton Brown. Really scary name huh? Well at least we know now why Brown is after them. See, Drew obviously was coming back to finish the job with- oh, wait. He was just getting gas for the concert. Well then, Drew was obviously going to steal the- oh, wait. Drew left money on the gas pump. So much for giving our killer a motive.

Getting freaked out, the girls move on and find the body of Zack, only now half of his right arm is gone. (Will you STOP asking me why? The movie never explains why!)

The girls run out into the road and wave down a guy with cotton taped to his face. Er, I mean a guy with a beard. They get in and get utterly freaked out when they discover they he has blood on his boots.

The girls squeal and slap him for a good thirty seconds before he’s able to explain he has a butcher shop down the road with a phone. Taylor and Justine don’t have a lot of time to stay calm as the killer shows up, drags Cottonbeard out of the truck and kill him. (Twenty minutes left. You’re almost there.)

The girls spend about 5 minutes whispering to each other while staying at the truck (since obviously the killer is nowhere near them right?) before they run off for the butcher shop on foot.

The next three minutes is nothing but them being chased to the butcher house. We start being able to actually see the killer himself, but he’s not much to look at. He’s a slow moving individual with a long black wig over his face. And that’s it. Bet you’re going to have nightmares, right?

When the two girls reach the butcher’s place, they find two knives to defend themselves (though you will shortly find that they never use them). Justine finds a phone and calls 911 when the killer shows up and knocks her out with a simple slap to the face. This leaves the killer to do battle with Taylor, who has somehow lost her knife so she tries fighting him with a meat hook, eventually stabbing him in the leg, and knocking him out with it. The killer never makes any sound, by the way. Ever. You would think that getting a meat hook to the leg would at least call for a cuss word, but this dude NEVER speaks. Not scary, just stupid. And the fight scene just has eerie music just like the rest of the movie. Nothing to suggest that this is a climax, though that’s probably because this ISN’T anything like a climax.

Taylor tries to wake up Justine, dude becomes conscious, Taylor tries impaling him on another cutting tool. Taylor wakes up Justine, whereupon this dude is STILL alive and unimpales himself. Taylor runs for the door, but Justine JUST STANDS where she is, so the killer can grab her, smack her against the wall, and she falls unconscious. More battling between Taylor and the killer which ends with Taylor shooting him with some type of gun (a nail gun I think).

Justine wakes up and runs over and helps Taylor up, and they hug and cry as punk band music inexplicably begins playing.

Police arrive, and stand everywhere looking important as an emergency crew helps Justine (who’s on a stretcher with an oxygen mask on) into the ambulance as Taylor sits in the ambulance with her. (Hey, Justine got slapped twice across the face and pushed into the wall. Who WOULDN’T require medical attention after that?)

We are then treated to the end credits and “outtakes” at the very end, which aren’t very funny at all, except I suppose Zack who is goofing around with his “missing arm” . . . which for some reason is his left instead of his right.

And so we conclude the worst horror movie ever. It is completely broken. It tries and fails every single time to produce even the slightest bit of horror. Even for an independent film this bombs. It makes clichéd horror flicks look like masterpieces. And if all of this doesn’t give you a clear message, then let me say it outright: DO NOT WATCH THIS MOVIE.

Seriously. I don’t care if you’re a fan of bad horror movies. If you, as a human being on this earth, appreciate ANY type of horror AT ALL, then you will steer clear of this movie, because it is NOT a horror movie. It is a summation of useless waste of movie that has been mistakenly labeled as a horror movie, but it fails on ALL requirements.

It is your duty to avoid this film. I cannot stress that enough. DON’T WATCH THIS MOVIE.

Thank you.