Film
A Field in England
Ben Wheatley's black-and-white fever dream drops a handful of Civil War deserters into a single field and lets an alchemist, a mushroom trip, and something ancient in the soil do the rest. It's cheap, hallucinatory, and genuinely unsettling — less a story than a descent, shot like folk horror crossed with a bad acid flashback. Not for the impatient.
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The Witch2016
The same slow-burn dread of isolated people, harsh land, and an ambiguous evil pressing in from just outside the frame — Eggers' period detail and creeping menace are the closest cousin you'll find.
But Glacially paced and thick with archaic dialect; if Wheatley's chaos already tested your patience, this asks for more of it.

Kill List2011
Wheatley's earlier film, and the one that shows his obsession with ordinary men sliding into ritualistic horror through violence, paranoia, and a plot that refuses to explain itself.
But Brutally violent and deliberately disorienting — some find the tonal whiplash from kitchen-sink drama to horror unbearable rather than thrilling.

Apostle2018
A man infiltrates an island cult in search of his sister, and the film builds the same sense of nature, belief, and buried horror colliding under pressure.
But Gorier and more conventionally plotted than Wheatley's film — less interested in ambiguity, more in delivering a nasty punch.

The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre1948
Same core machine: a small group, a rumoured treasure buried in hostile land, and the slow revelation that the real danger was each other all along.
Bogart and two companions hunt buried gold in the wilderness and watch paranoia and greed dismantle them one by one — a classic Hollywood adventure that runs on exactly the engine Wheatley strips down to its bones.
But No horror, no hallucinations — just a lean, grounded morality tale, so the connection is structural rather than atmospheric.

More like this (8)
Witchfinder General1968
Same Civil War landscape, same sense that England's fields hide something rotten. Vincent Price is chillingly plausible as a man using chaos as cover for cruelty.
But Its horror is human rather than supernatural — bleak, grubby, and mean-spirited in a way that offers little of Wheatley's black comedy.

The Wicker Man1973
The foundational British folk-horror text: an outsider walks into a landscape governed by rules he doesn't understand, and the film lets dread build through sunlight rather than shadow.
But Its reputation has outpaced its pacing — patient stretches of folk ritual before the ending most people already know is coming.

Blood on Satan's Claw1971no page yet
A 17th-century English village succumbs to something ancient and malevolent rising from the soil itself — the same period, the same sense of land as antagonist.
But Slower and more episodic than modern horror fans expect, with effects that have aged into camp rather than menace.
Men in Black1997
Garland's countryside nightmare shares Wheatley's interest in the English landscape as a hallucinatory trap, and it's just as willing to abandon literal explanation for pure sensation.
But Its symbolism is heavier-handed and its final act divisively grotesque — you'll either find it audacious or exasperating.

High-Rise2015
Wheatley again, this time with society collapsing floor by floor instead of field by field — the same delight in watching order dissolve into savage farce.
But Broader and more satirical than his horror work; if you wanted more dread and less black comedy, this pivots too far.

Enys Men2023no page yet
Mark Jenkin's Cornish ghost story is hypnotic and formally strange, built from grain and repetition rather than plot — a spiritual cousin in its refusal to explain itself.
But Almost aggressively slow and plotless; even patient folk-horror fans have found it more experiment than film.
Winstanley1975no page yet
Strip away the mushrooms and the alchemist and you're left with Winstanley's real, sober version of Wheatley's fantasy: ordinary Englishmen trying to claim a field during the same war, and failing just as badly.
Kevin Brownlow's austere, black-and-white account of a real 17th-century Digger commune trying to farm common land amid Civil War chaos — same period, same soil, same England, told with documentary plainness instead of psychedelia.
But Deliberately unglamorous and slow, made on almost no budget — it offers history's texture, not horror's thrill.
Fantastic Fungi2019
The same mushroom circle that sends Whitehead into paranoid delirium is, here, the hero — a documentary answer to the question of what that trip might feel like if the field wasn't haunted.
A documentary about mycelium, mushrooms, and altered consciousness — time-lapse photography turns fungal networks into something genuinely trippy, and it treats the mushroom trip as wonder rather than nightmare.
But Earnest, New Age-inflected, and occasionally a bit much on the mysticism — a world away from Wheatley's cynicism and menace.

People
Cast
Reece ShearsmithWhitehead
Michael SmileyO'Neil
Richard GloverFriend
Peter FerdinandoJacob
Ryan PopeCutler
Julian BarrattTrower- Laura ObiolsAnastasia
Sara DeeThe Field (voice)
Directing
- Ben WheatleyDirector
- James SharpeFirst Assistant Director
- Anita ChristyScript Supervisor
- Carole SalisburyScript Supervisor
Writing
- Amy JumpWriter
- Ben WheatleyWriter
Production
- Anna HiggsExecutive Producer
- Jacques GroenewaldLocation Manager
- Andrew StarkeProducer
- Claire JonesProducer
- Gareth JonesProduction Accountant
- Philiy PageProduction Manager
Recommended by
The Wicker Man, The Devils, Kill List, Häxan, Witchfinder General