Cast: Bill
Cowell, Kelleigh Murray, Alyssa Cowell, Elena Pezzino
Director: Bill
Cowell
Genre: Horror
The next movie on
our list has no idea what it is called. When compiling this list, it
was called The Maize: The Movie, (2004), but when I received my DVD,
it appears to be called Dark Harvest 2: The Maize.
A little bit of
research and I’ve found out that this is a sequel to Dark Harvest
in much the same way as Troll 2 is a sequel to Troll, ie, not in any
way shape or form, (see review here)! So why on earth they changed
the name of the movie at some point, I have no idea, unless it was to
capitalise on the success of Dark Harvest.
This then
confuses me even more, as Dark Harvest went straight to VHS and was
hardly a ‘roaring success’, (in fact a quick read of some reviews
and it appears it stunk the big one!). The confusion gets even worse
when I then discover that there was a Dark Harvest 3 movie, also
released in 2004 and also which has no relation whatsoever to DH1 or
DH2!
What on earth was
going on at distributor, Lions Gate, in 2004? Was there some kind of
brand new super skunk which the executives started smoking? Why buy
the rights to 3 separate movies and try to package them as a trilogy?
By this point I
felt disorientated and confused, a bit like I was in the middle of a
maze, which reminded me, we had a bad movie to watch…..
It’s Halloween
and what do kids love to do on Halloween? That’s right, they go
and visit their local corn maze!
Keri Walker,
(Alyssa Cowell), and her sister, Ali, (Elena Pezzino), decide to do
just that, after all, why go trick or treating and get lots of yummy
candy bars and chocolate, when you can traipse around a muddy corn
maze on a cold October morning?
Their father, Shy
Walker, (Bill Cowell), has a psychic vision that his 2 daughters are
not going to have the fun fuelled experience you would expect from
this activity. Seeing a vision of the 2 girls being murdered, Shy
drives down to the maze to try to stop them.
When he gets
there, he finds out from his wife, Susan, (Kelleigh Murray), that he
is already too late and his daughters are in the maze. In an attempt
to stop his vision coming true, Shy goes into the maze to rescue
them.
There follows 90
minutes of Shy shouting out to his children, the children shouting
back and despite being only 10 feet away from each other, never
seeming to find each other or their way out.
Can Shy rescue
the girls? Is there really a killer in the maze? And can you pad out an entire movie with a man wandering around a corn maze and
doing very little? Watch DH2 to find out!
Or rather, don’t
bother, because yes, they really can pad out an entire movie with a
man wandering around a corn maze. Cowell could have saved us the
trouble of having to watch this film by just tweeting the damn plot.
Hell, he would still have enough characters left over to use the
hashtag #whatweretheysmokingoveratLionsGate.
I mean seriously,
how on earth did this movie ever get made? The conversation between
Cowell and Lions Gate must have gone along the lines of:
Lions Gate: So
tell me about this movie idea you have.
Bill Cowell: OK,
so a man wanders around a maze for 90 minutes.
*Long Pause*
LG: Go on…..
BC: Oh no, that’s
it.
LG: Excellent,
here’s some money, go and make that shit! *takes big drag from
suspicious looking cigarette*
The DVD case for
this movie has a scarecrow with a scythe in his hand. I have
absolutely no idea why as the scary looking scarecrow is not in this
movie and this film is not about a scarecrow going on a murdering
rampage, (a cereal killer if you will!).
What we actually
have here is a very cheap looking movie. Cowell himself leads a cast
of actors (and I am using the word actors in its broadest possible
term) and is woefully useless. He is so bad that he is constantly
upstaged by the wooden bridge which is in the centre of the maze.
Visually it’s
awful and contains constant quick cuts, zooming in and out and
special effects found on budget camcorders of the early 80’s.
Things are constantly out of focus and blurry and it’s as if Cowell
found a bucket of moonshine on his way into the maze and necked the
lot before filming.
Cowell being off
his nut on fermented corn mash would also explain the continuity, or
rather lack of it. One minute it’s mid-afternoon, then it’s
early morning, then it’s dusk, then it’s mid-afternoon again. A
freak rain storm also appears to be going on during the day as one
shot the ground is soaking wet with puddles, then it’s bone dry,
then it’s a little damp, then it’s soaking wet with puddles
again.
It may sound like
I’m solely blaming Cowell for this dire movie and you would be
right, I am, and with good reason.
The alarm bells
should have started ringing when I realised Cowell stars, writes and
directs the movie. It is becoming apparent now as we work our way
through the list, that when one person does pretty much everything in
a movie, then it’s invariably going to be very bad, (for example
Boggy Creek 2, (see review here)). If there’s no one around to
advise or suggest that maybe that wonderful idea you had and are now
investing time and money on may actually be horse manure, then
unfortunately you’ll end up with a lousy film, (but wonderful
roses!).
And this movie
smacks of someone who was just having a massive ego trip and was not
going to be told that his daft movie of a man’s inability to solve
a simple maze was utter tosh. I mean he directed this, wrote this,
starred in it, produced it, was Executive Producer, (how does that
work? Did he consult himself? ‘Is this crap Cowell?’ ‘No
Cowell you’re doing a sterling job!’ ‘Thanks Cowell!’), in
charge of cinematography and was assistant to the Editor. Who else
is there to blame for this?
And so what we have ended up with is a horror movie, which has to be
the most dull, lifeless and uninteresting movie I have seen on this
list so far. And I’ve seen Swept Away, (see review here)!
This movie is in
no way scary at all and the only thing which is scary is that Lions
Gate deemed it worthy of distribution.
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