A 59 minute ‘Experience’ make NO mistake, ‘The Cornshukker’ is an experimental piece that has strong tones of ‘Eraserhead’ and Lynchs earlier short films. But with a distinctly more humerous slant offsetting any true feelings of discomfort or horror.

There isnt really a ‘plot’ for this thing so much as a series of happenings, we follow the titular ‘Cornshukker’ a somewhat mysterious humanoid being who lives mainly off of Corn and Crawfish. The film opens explaining that their are legends about him dating back decades, if not centuries, and its also established that, due to an ever expanding population, the cornfields that the ‘Shukker’ once called home have now been transformed into suburban hotspots, leaving him basically trapped inside an old abandoned house where he utilises telepathy to try and get rid of people he doesnt like, in order to live a quite quiet existence.

The closest thing to a plot that we get is that after several encounters with various ‘Weirdos’ the Shukker winds up having a conversation with an old bigot, who basically gives the whole ‘We dont want your kind round here’ type speech. The Cornshukker promptly kills him, buries him and sows some corn on his gravesite. A sheriff comes knocking looking for the miser, but he cant be found. At which point he implies a mob might take the law into their own hands if the Shukker doesnt keep to himself.

The themes of adolesence in rural isolation are positively rife here (As an awkward teen who grew up in farm country myself can attest) and ‘The Cornshukker’ is essentially some kind of alagory for growing up, feeling out who you are as a person, and the pushback that can occur in close knit rural towns when that kind of divergency happens.

Its a film that is mixed on its messaging about whether being an individual is a good thing, or whether being *too* individual is the thing that’ll ultimately trip you up. Its not exactly hardcore coding in terms of film symbolism. This is actually pretty blunt and basic, but I appreciate that the film at least *tries* to impress a sense of loneliness on the writer and directors part.

It was shot on 16mm and edited on tape, the 16mm rushes are long gone, so we’re basically just left with one of the few copies of this movie that ever saw the light of day (This kind of falls into the ‘Things’ camp of ‘Movies that are considered SOV, even though they arnt really SOV)

The scripts kind of nebulous and abstract, I quite liked the tonal vibes it was playing with for the most part, but i’d be lying if I said that it didnt feel creaky at 59 minutes, this should have been a 20 – 30 minute short MAX…and would have massively benefitted from a couple more pass throughs in the edit.

The pacing is super slow burn, but they insert random eccentric characters which does help kick the audience up the backside roughly every 7-10 minutes or so. These characters are incredibly 1 dimensional…such as ‘the dancing pizza guy’, ‘the sheriff’ and ‘Elvis on a motorbike’ thats what they are, thats what they do. thats all they is.

Bordering on Video art, its kind of hard to judge the quality of this thing from a direction standpoint, it’s largely handheld, predominently styalized in black and white (presumably because B&W film stock was cheaper at the time, and that B&W film is more forgiving in terms of cine and styalization) it’s super rough around the edges, largely reliant on analogue video effects to really try and push the strangeness of the ‘Cornshukker’

I cant say its particularly coherent, but from the looks of it, it was a skeleton crew, shooting on the fly, doing what they could. And this is the directors first and until a couple of years ago ONLY feature film. So taking into account that this was pretty much a one off by people with limited film experience. its bad, but it could have been worse.

Same goes for the cine which is SUPER rough around the edges, but in places actually captures some really quite interestingly composed imagery. Theres not much in the way of B-roll and the edit, as mentioned, is PAINFULLY longer than it really needed to be. But for a first attempt? its alright.

The cast all feel like first timers, with only the actor playing ‘The Cornshukker’ really drawing me in honestly, he’s got a strange kind of crabby spidery movement to him and the constant twitching combined with the fact that his only spoken line is ‘I know.’ creates a genuinely strange experience to behold. But the rest of the cast? they all feel like the crew got some friends in, gave them a gimmick and rough idea of what to do in the shot, and then let them loose. the range is passable to dreadful and your milage will vary depending on how tolerant you are for ‘Actors who arnt Actors’

For what it is? I kind of got on with ‘The Cornshukker’ its by no means an essential watch and its painfully dull at times. But where it shines, it manages to just about win me over. Though, if ever a film was aching for a sequel where a crew of weirdos from the city go out into the cornfield to try and find ‘The Shukker’ Now would be the time.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-cornshukker/