A Public Information Film produced in the 1990s to warn impressionable young British kids about the dangers of playing on farms (ostensibly — the kids who die in the flashbacks are all farmhands).
Robin and Sam, two preteen siblings from an unspecified area of rural England, go to explore some nearby woodland neighboring the farm on which their father works one day, when they find an oddly placed gravestone of one Joshua Walker, 1831-1904, vandalised to read "Never Rest In Peace" They encounter Tom and Jenny, another brother-sister duo whose father works on the farm, who elaborates on Walker's story: he owned the farm many years ago, and four children working there under his wing were all killed in horrific accidents due to his negligence; prompting him to declare in his dying days that he will "never rest in peace".
Walker's ghost thus serves as a framing device: an ominous warning, haunting the farmland and attempting to prevent the kids from suffering fatal accidents akin to those seen in the flashback.
A Spiritual Successor of sorts to the notorious Apaches (only somewhat less traumatising), it seems to have, at the present moment, disappeared into obscurity, with VHS copies online typically turning up around £70 apiece. However, this may soon change as Guru Larry has pledged to review it in the near future as he did Apaches (and the similar PIF The Finishing Line).
The film is viewable in its entirety here
Tropes featured in the film:
- Adults Are Useless: Both played straight and averted: Joshua Walker, in the flashbacks, leaves four young children unsupervised working on the farm and, predictably, they all die in horrific accidents. But in the present day, the parents do what they can to keep their children out of harm's way: after Jenny's brush with death in the grain silo, her father instructs her to stay at home and recover.
- Because Destiny Says So: The four children (Tom, Jenny, Robin and Sam) are all involved in accidents on the farm in the same or a similar manner to their 19th-century counterparts, but thanks to timely intervention and Joshua Walker's ghost's warning, there are no fatalities this time. Until the ending, of course.
- Cruel Twist Ending: The kids realise Sam's deduction of Walker's ghost being present to prevent the four of them from suffering fatal accidents in similar manner to the farmhands of the flashback was true, and Robin is saved from being fatally run over by his father's tractor but is hospitalised for some time afterwards. They leave rosettes on Walker's grave in commemoration, and Sam vows that they have "all learned their lesson" and will be "so careful" in future to ensure this will never happen again.... right before making a beeline for the farm, straight into the path of her father's oncoming tractor where we are only shown the abject horror on his, Tom and Jenny's faces. Roll credits. Doubles as Aesop Amnesia.
- Deliberately Monochrome: All of the flashbacks are shown in sepia.
- Generation Xerox: Of sorts. The young farmhands killed in the flashbacks are all portrayed by the same actors as Tom, Jenny, Robin, and Sam in the present day.
- Irony: Despite Sam being the most careful and sensible of the children, she is the only one who ends up dying.
- Posthumous Character: Joshua Walker.
- Scare 'Em Straight
