I Died in the Cornfield

John and Sarah Crimson leave their careers and city life in Chicago behind to start fresh in a rural Nebraska farmhouse. What they do not know is that a family was brutally murdered there one year earlier and the case was ruled a murder suicide — leaving the father blamed for the deaths of his wife and son.

From the moment they arrive strange things begin happening. Objects move on their own. Whispers rise from the cornfield at the edge of the property. John begins to hear a child's voice asking for help. When he rolls a ball into the cornfield it rolls back. When he walks to the edge of the field and asks if anyone is there, a voice answers: Find the tall man.

John goes to Deputy Holt and begins asking questions about the family that lived in the farmhouse. He visits the library and discovers a newspaper article about the case — a murder suicide that closed without investigation. The article mentions a husband and wife. No child. John cannot explain why there is no child in the record. He does not yet know the child is the one speaking to him from the cornfield.

Meanwhile Mason Richards, the local real estate agent who sold them the farmhouse, begins trying to get John and Sarah out of the property. He offers to release them from the mortgage. He tracks John down at a coffee shop and suggests he leave town. John does not understand why until he stays long enough to find out.

When a ghostly boy finally emerges from the cornfield John learns the truth. The boy Luca was ten years old when he was killed. His family's murderer was never sought because the case was closed and his father Raymond was blamed. Luca has been waiting as an earthbound spirit, unable to move on until someone clears his family's name.

As John digs deeper he discovers the real killer is Mason Richards. Mason had been having an affair with Luca's mother Carol. When she threatened to tell her husband Raymond the truth, Mason murdered the entire family and staged it to look like Raymond had killed his wife and son before turning the gun on himself. Luca had witnessed Mason in the kitchen with his mother, heard Mason threaten her, and ran into the cornfield that night when Mason came back.

Deputy Holt obtains medical records placing Mason at a local hospital on the night of the murders with a hand laceration requiring twelve stitches — consistent with a struggle. Combined with Luca's recorded testimony naming Mason and identifying him from a photograph, Holt arrests Mason Richards.

With justice finally delivered, Luca returns to the cornfield at night. The rage that has defined his presence for a year is gone. What remains is simply a ten year old boy at peace. He says goodbye

to John and walks back into the stalks. A flash of light erupts over the cornfield. The camera pulls back until John disappears into the green and nothing is left in frame but the cornfield standing there the way it always has.