• Straight to Video
• Director: Bill Cowell
• Written by: Bill Cowell
• Running Time: 100 minutes
• Language: English
• MPAA Rating: R - Restricted
• Cast: Bill Cowell, Kelleigh Murray, Alyssa Cowell, Elena Pezzino, Douglas Buczak, Lindsay Prentice, Lauren Prentice, Ed Smolinski, Julie Brown, Matt Smolinski, Eric Lipps, Patti Staebell, Michelle Cowell, Kelly Lipps, Bethany Bison, Tiffany Norwicki, Kelly Shoemaker, Allison Wright

Minus the inclusion of a cornfield, “Dark Harvest 2: The Maize” isn’t a sequel or a prequel, nor does it have anything whatsoever to do with the series regardless of what the poster advertisements or box cover art would have you believe. Considering that he’s not the culprit behind this deception, blaming director Bill Cowell (2000's "Raindrops") won’t get you anywhere. See, when Lionsgate Films, those greedy bastards, purchased the rights to his second film, “The Maize: The Movie”, little did Cowell know that their intention was to box it up as a sequel to their moderately successful “Dark Harvest” and put it out into the marketplace as such.

At some point, I’m sure, he signed off on it (financial incentives and a chance to have his film seen by a mass audience is generally a nice motivator), but I’m sure if Cowell were to have it on his own terms, he would have had his project released as a stand-alone film, allowing it to soar or sink on its own terms. Instead, his film will forever be known as the sequel to “Dark Harvest”, something that it is not, and folks will forever point out the deception, even if Cowell had next to nothing to do with said deception. As I said, if you have to blame somebody, blame the folks at Lionsgate. However, and let me say this really loudly, regardless of whether or not the film was released as “Dark Harvest 2” or as “The Maize” it doesn’t change the fact that it’s just plain awful. Simply put, this is a horrendous slice of cinema that features a one-note, yawn-inducing plot, atrocious child acting, appalling camera work, and some god-awful pacing that ticks the clock at 100-agonizingly-minutes. Dear god, I nearly fell asleep three times watching Bill Cowell knuckle-drag his ass back and forth across the same stretch of cornfield for the millionth time. This is one of those strange instances where I can’t quite put to paper the negative reaction I had to my screening of this title. It’s one of those deals where you just have to experience it yourself to grasp the full horror of it.

The plot goes something like this; Shy (not the adjective, but his actual name) Walker (Bill Cowell) is a normal guy with a strange ability in that he’s able to see the future (and occasionally, by necessity of plot momentum, the past). He’s not so much Edgar Cayce but, maybe, “That’s So Raven”. Interestingly, it’s Halloween, and his wife and kids are down at the big community event, The Maize. What’s The Maize I hear you asking? Not really, but I’ll tell you anyways. It’s a maze that has been structured into the town’s big corn maize (maize, maze… uh… get it... not cool) and it’s apparently all the rage with the locals. Anyhoo, Shy, after listening to a regional news report detailing how two little girls went missing in the very same Maize the year before, he suddenly has a premonition that his kids are going to be abducted or murdered or something in a similar fashion. In a kind of muted panic, Shy dials up his wife, Susan (Kelleigh Murray), and proceeds to remind her of all those wacky times he foretold of his daughter’s various injuries, and then hips her to the quick about his most recent chilling visions. And even though Susan seems to gauge the gravity of the situation, she makes little effort to actually go and get her kids, electing to stand at the edge of the cornfield and scream their names. Sigourney Weaver, she is not.

It’s at this point that Shy decides to take matters into his own hands and mad dashes his ass down to The Maize. The search begins minutes after he arrives and for the next hour and change, we’re forced to watch as Shy meanders up and down, back and forth across a seemingly infinite expanse of cornfield looking for his two twit daughters. (In reality, it’s the same single stretch but shot from different angles, but who’s keeping score.) His two daughters, Keri (Alyssa Cowell) and Ali (Elena Pezzino), seem oblivious to the fact that their dad is calling out their names at the top of his lungs, but it’s easy to see why, as they seem determined to get the video project they are producing over and done with – thus rendering them unable to grasp, you know, common sense things like, ‘when dad calls, you go see what he wants’. At one point, the pair actually run smack dab into their father only to run away for no coherent reason. What the girls do next makes even less sense. The inadequacy of the writing is in full bloom in this segment, as Cowell must have realized that it wouldn’t be much of a movie if the girls and dad were reunited twenty minutes in. The two little girls (Lindsay and Lauren Prentice) who mysteriously disappeared the prior year suddenly make an appearance, first to the girls and then to Shy (fog machine and red/blue lighting design are extra). It seems that when they were murdered, one of the girl’s lockets was ripped from her body and lost. Now their spirits are doomed to haunt the cornfield until the locket is returned to them. So, yes, the girl’s killer ("When Soldier's Cry" star Douglas Buczak), you just know that he’ll factor into the story in some way and he does, materializing now and again as some kind of peeping tom, spying on Shy as he tracks his girls. Interestingly, the killer seems to be wearing the exact same clothes that he wore the day he killed the two girls one year earlier, a detail we’re privy to thanks to Shy’s random visions.

As the film slogs its way through its own maze of ineptitude towards its corny ending (sorry, I had to), we’re treated to a lingering, arcane scene where Shy, dogged by a pair of Barney Fife-like cops, sits in darkness digging something up because of what he witnessed on a videotape. His sudden knowledge of what he’s labouring to unearth is never fully explained. In the end, we discover that our two little ghost children had hidden away Shy’s two little girls in the spirit realm in an effort to protect them from the man who killed them the previous year. Okay, I guess that’s kind of cool and kind of explains why Shy and the girls could not find each other, it still doesn’t make up for how utterly tedious and amateurish the whole affair was.

I have to take a quick second to talk about the technical shoddiness of the whole piece. Let’s just say that I’m a big fan of Adobe After Effects, as Stan and I have toiled with using it since we began production on “Serpent Mound” but, upon watching this film, and how Cowell, trying to be stylish, employed it in his production, it’s quite painful and makes me want to re-think ever using it myself. Several sequences throughout the film feature small rectangular boxes suddenly popping up onto the screen, each offering a different angle of the action, that does zilch to move along the narrative. It worked for "Katie Bird" but it doesn't work here. This is one of those needless artistic decisions that, aside from pissing you off, also just reminds you of how amateurish the production is. Also, the camera work... Ooooh, I have to discuss the camera work. The camera is permanently set on auto-focus, thus setting up numerous sequences where everything goes out of focus as things move in front of the lens and the focus is forced to adjust itself. Amateur, I say. My last gripe is with the actors, all of which, with the exception of maybe Bill Cowell, are terrible. Cowell’s two daughters are absolutely abysmal, while the Prentice girls, doing their best “Children of the Dammed”, come out looking somewhat respectable, maybe even a tad creepy. Also look for Julie Brown. No, not that Julie Brown, but some random girl that Bill thought had a famous enough name that it would look good headlining the movie. Lastly, the cornfield, which is practically a character unto itself, gets more screentime than anyone else. I swear, you'll not see more shots of cornfields in one movie as you will here. Cowell loves his location and he lets us know it!

While writing his flick, it’s obvious that Cowell’s inspiration came from specifically two films, one of which is considered a legitimate classic (praised by smug critics and real folks alike) while the other is a lesser known oddity that has garnered a place in the hearts of hardened film geeks, maybe because they are the only people on the planet who are even aware of its existence. Both titles find their way into “Dark Harvest 2: The Maize” in small but noticeable ways. First off, the two benign albino ghost girls who escort the hero of the story towards the killer, and their own salvation, seems lifted outright from “The Forest”. Secondly, the hero seems motivated by some never explained but prevalent psychic ability - allowing him to forecast the future in small doses. This seems to have been pinched directly from “The Shining”. I'm sure Kubrick would be ecstatic to know of this rendering... er, tribute.

For the record, Cowell filmed a sequel in 2006 titled “The Maize 2: Forever Yours” which featured many of the actors reprising their roles. Interestingly, Cowell has yet to release the film and is probably holding out for a big-time distribution deal. I’m no psychic, but that’s a deal I don’t foresee coming anytime soon.

Last time I checked, this film had the distinction of being number 43 on the imdb.com Bottom 100.