There’s no secret about why this film was made:
I mean, a film about crop circles on an isolated farm surrounded by acres of cornfield that premiered on the Sci Fi Network only a few months after M. Night Shyamalan’s movie Signs came out?
What an amazing coincidence, right?
But you do not — in any way, shape or form — get the impression of a Signs rip-off in the first few minutes of the film, where we meet Stephen Baldwin playing a clearly mentally disturbed farmer who thinks there’s something out there trying to get him.
Although don’t ask me what the heck all the scarecrows are for.
It’s the best part of the movie, by far, and so minimally tied to the rest of the film I have to wonder whether it was filmed later (when they got a minor star for a few days) and then tacked on.
Or was it part of an earlier, more routine Children of the Corn sort of horror film which was transformed into yet another aliens in the corn patch movie after Signs came out?
Whatever the case, once we’re past that insane and frenetic opening — and Stephen Baldwin’s character is safely dead — Silent Warnings transforms itself into that absurdly familiar horror trope, the group of young friends going off to spend some time in a lonely place where spooky things will start happening to them.
As you would expect from this sort of film, we get a bit of sex and just enough nudity to make sure that the DVD release will get an “R” rating. Billy Zane — the other minor star in the piece — plays the young Sheriff, who just took over the job and is trying hard to convince himself he’s now in charge. He does actually get a scene or two at the start, but mostly just shows up at the end in the big final showdown.
And I’m more than willing to put in a good word for that big showdown, with all its action, violence, and even an out-and-out steal from Poltergeist. Yeah, the CGI aliens are appalling (even for 2003!), but I’ll admit that I love the idea of most of it, with all the pillars of light, teleporting aliens, and the guy who gets cut in half, even if the execution doesn’t ever live up to anything close to what they imagined. And, let’s face it, the sheer energy of that whole sequence is almost enough to make you forget just how crappy the aliens look.
Almost.
However, it’s that long and routine section in the middle which just weighs this film down. Yeah, some of the individual bits are interesting (although most of it seems to have left little impression behind) but there wasn’t a lot happening. Nor did you ever get the feeling that it was building up or going anywhere in particular until almost the end.
I don’t know, some of the critics liked this one, although I’m not entirely sure why. It was one of the last Sci Fi Network originals that they actually made available to the critics before its release, and you can see why they might have had a bit more confidence in it. After all, it has a great opening sequence and a rousing (if flawed) finale. Like many of their earlier films, it does seem better and more distinctive than much of what they churned out later on — and, let’s face it, would seem a far better film if the middle of the film hadn’t been quite as shapeless.
But I’m still not sure that a great opening and an exciting finale is enough to save what is otherwise routine and overly familiar.
Still, if you are looking for a few B-movie thrills, or another film to fill out a midnight movie marathon, it should do the trick.
Although a field full of popcorn will definitely help…
rivets on the poster 