The viewing experience of the Texas Killing Fields is like eating a canterbury Easter bunny. You look at the film’s IMDB page and it is hard not to get excited. The cast is full of recognizable names and the premise of the story seems bullet-proof. The film is based on a true story and seems to have the appropriate sense of scale. You want to bite into it and be showered in indulgence. However, this viewing adventure ends up being remarkably hollow and begins to crumble when pressure is applied.
“In the Texas bayous, a local homicide detective teams up with a cop from New York City to investigate a series of unsolved murders.”
Director: Ami Canaan Mann Writer: Don Ferranone Staring: Sam Worthington, Jeffery Dean Morgan, Chloë Grace Moretz, Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, Annabeth Gish Release Date: October 14, 2011 IMDB
The viewing experience of the Texas Killing Fields is like eating a canterbury Easter bunny. You look at the film’s IMDB page and it is hard not to get excited. The cast is full of recognizable names and the premise of the story seems bullet-proof. The film is based on a true story and seems to have the appropriate sense of scale. You want to bite into it and be showered in indulgence. However, this viewing adventure ends up being remarkably hollow and begins to crumble when pressure is applied.
Texas Killing Fields (2011) is a small movie. It takes place in a remarkably small community in Texas. It has a budget equivalent to my personal bank account. The microscopic feel towards the movie could be seen as an appreciation for the small things that add up to a great viewing experience. The movie has all the variables to add up to something special.
Somehow, Texas Killing Fields fails its own possibility yet manages to be better than it has any right to be. Does that make sense? Part of the issue with watching Texas Killing Fields now is that we know all the faces in it. Sam Worthington, Jeffery Dean Morgan, Chloë Grace Moretz, Jessica Chastain and Jason Clarke are all immediately identifiable to multiple new generations.
Everyone knows Jake Sully, Negan, the girl from Kick-Ass (2010), the red-head bombshell and the constantly disgruntled angry man. Everyone knows who they are, yet only one of these five has risen past the “OH THAT GUY” label.
Jessica Chastain has been nominated for three three Oscars and finally won in 2022 for The Eyes Of Tammy Faye. She had her best success in the years following Texas Killing Fields. Chastain was nominated for her work in The Help (2012) and really broke out in Zero Dark Thirty (2013). I think it is safe to say Texas Killing FIelds was not her ultimate springboard, but she is the one who emerged most prominent in the aftermath.
So what the hell is Texas Killing Fields about?
Mike Souder (Sam Worthington) and Brian Heigh (Jefferey Dean Morgan) play classic cop personas in a small Texas town. Souder is a hot-headed homicide cop and Heigh is a newcomer to the south trying to get settled. The pair get latched onto a case tracking a serial killer who has been disposing of bodies in the locally referred marshy “Killing Fields”. As the men, with the help of Pam Stall (Jessica Chastain), begin to piece together the mystery, the case becomes personal. The criminal begins attacking the people most important to Souder and Heigh and eventually it becomes a race against time to catch the killer.
Yea, the plot is formulaic. It is both what caps the Texas Killing Field’s ceiling and maintains its floor. Despite having many talented people casted in feature roles, the mystery doesn’t bring enough captivation to burst through the trench of streaming content. I talk about it now in the streaming context because when Texas Killing Fields was released in 2011, nobody saw it. It made less than 50K in theaters on its opening weekend across 10 theaters domestically.
One possible reason for the film’s copy & paste structure may be because it was made by a very young director. Ami Canaan Mann is the daughter of Michael Mann. Talk about the stress of family expectations. Texas Killing Fields was Mann’s first major motion picture with more than a shoe-string budget and a notable cast. She took over the project after Danny Boyle (of 28 Days Later (2002)) stepped down citing how the story was “so dark it would never get made”.
It would be fun to know if Mann made any changes to the movie after Boyle left, but it’s safe to say that the British filmmaker was correct in his appraisal of the film’s end prognosis. Also, Boyle was right about the word “dark” because the night scenes are indeed VERY dark in a literal sense. Sometimes tough to see.
Texas Killing Fields is destined to be a very deep cut final Jeopardy! question within some friend groups who have depraved movie trivia. The movie is remarkably average, and often below average. It gets graded on a slight curve because of its strange existence. Nothing within the movie is worth talking to others about. It is everything surrounding the movie that can raise eyebrows of the most eccentric and absurd movie enthusiasts.
Texas Killing Fields is streaming on Amazon Prime.
MaXXXine (2024) “In 1980s Hollywood, adult film star and aspiring actress Maxine Minx finally gets her big break. But as a mysterious killer stalks the starlets of Hollywood, a trail of blood threatens to reveal her sinister past.” Director: Ti WestWriter: Ti WestCast: Mia Goth, Elizabeth Debicki, Halsey, Lily Collins, Kevin Bacon, Bob Cannavale, Michelle…
Stanko's Stance 