#Death via corn silo movie#

Occupational Safety and Health Administration has taken note of the dangerous conditions in handling grain harvested in 2019. As a result, we have seen an uptick in situations where people have become engulfed and trapped or have died in grain bins.” It came in wet, it didn’t dry down very well and there’s a lot of broken material in the bins. “This particular crop is not storing well. “Grain quality is directly linked to safety,” Adkisson said. Those conditions make the grain flow less freely from the bins and make it more likely farmers will have to enter the bins to keep the grain moving, said Jeff Adkisson, a farmer who is vice president of the Grain and Feed Association of Illinois and also serves on the board of the national Grain Handling Safety Council. The lack of consistency and low quality of the grain make it more likely to clump, stick to the sides of a bin or form a crust over the top. Those factors from the 2019 harvest, in addition to the use of old, leaky bins on some farms, have combined to reduce the quality of grain being stored and result in a product known as “out-of-condition” grain. Heavy rainfall and brisk harvest conditions throughout 2019 across the 10-state “corn belt” that includes South Dakota led many farmers to harvest grain crops later than usual and produce grain that was immature or damper than normal. South Dakota in 2020 has already seen the death of a 27-year-old father of three in Brookings County in February and the entrapment of a farmer who was rescued from a grain bin in Hughes County in March. The number of reported grain entrapments across the country rose by 27% from 2018 to 2019, and deaths rose by 53% that year. Wet and cold weather in 2019 have created a dangerous situation this year for South Dakota farmers who store grain in bins, heightening a risk of entrapment or death that has existed on farms for generations. It’s clear Burnette and Williams have thought through who these people are, even if some of the finer details never make it to the screen.This article was originally published by South Dakota News Watch. The two bicker about strategies for extracting Cody while his mom, Valerie (Jill Paice) frets outside.ĭuring that rescue-prep, the characters hint around about their connections to each other and to some of the tragic stories in their community’s recent past. Much of the rest of the story involves the rescue process, which pits the farm’s sensitive boss Junior (Jim Parrack) against the cocky volunteer fireman Frank (Jeremy Holm).

#Death via corn silo movie#

The corn-collapse happens about 20 minutes into a movie that barely runs for over an hour (with a lot of that running time padded out by the closing credits). The sequence is also effectively nerve-racking, dramatizing the very real danger of grain entrapments. The grain quickly swallows his supervisor and buries the boy up to his chest.īurnette does a fine job of staging and filming the accident, using the natural light filtering into the silo and the golden glow of the corn to make this disaster look oddly beautiful. One day Cody is inside a corn silo when its contents suddenly shift. “Silo” features a very good cast of accomplished character actors and relative newcomers led by Jack DiFalco as Cody, a teenage asthmatic and aspiring heavy metal musician who works part-time harvesting grain and feed. Burnette handles the genre film and the art film pieces of “Silo” fairly well but shortchanges them both by not committing fully to either. That’s a defensible creative choice but here it’s not always effective. But director Marshall Burnette (who also co-wrote “Silo” with Jason Williams) uses those elements more as a hook for his quiet character study. The movie is also at times a nightmarish thriller and a cautionary tale. The indie drama “Silo” is a short, muted study of modern farm life, following multiple generations of small-town folks over the course of one tense day. Because moviegoing carries risks during this time, we remind readers to follow health and safety guidelines as outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and local health officials. The Times is committed to reviewing theatrical film releases during the COVID-19 pandemic.