A Field in England

Directed by Ben Wheatley

(Not rated)

***

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“A Field in England might not be to everyone’s taste, but it’s far and away the most enticingly original film to come out of the U.K. this year,” said Marc Savlov in The Austin Chronicle. Cult director Ben Wheatley employs an “unapologetically psychedelic” tone in spinning his tale of a small group of soldiers who desert during the England’s 17th-century civil war and unwittingly consume psilocybin mushrooms before undertaking a frustrating search for buried treasure. “Comedy, chaos, and a veritable smorgasbord of astonishingly beautiful camerawork ensue.” Thanks to that gorgeously disorienting middle section, this strange black-and-white drama “should thrive on the midnight circuit,” said Alan Scherstuhl in The Village Voice. The whole story proves to be “an unsettling series of fake-outs and takebacks,” with the confused soldiers regularly adopting new missions midstream. Unfortunately, “the happenstance plotting and over-reliance on violence as a plot motor dissipate the film’s energy by the end,” said Inkoo Kang in the Los Angeles Times. “Too much blood” has been spilled already on English soil.