La maldición del espantapájaros

I find it kind of odd that people are overly negative about this movie. Sure, it is a SyFy Channel original movie, so you shouldn't get your hopes up in the likes of major blockbuster multi-million dollar glamorous Hollywood productions. But every now and again SyFy Channel does manage to hit a Homerus - and they did so with "Scarecrow".

The story is about a town that celebrates the 100th annual scarecrow festival, and apparently there is a grim tale about an animated scarecrow on a local farm. This turns out to be true, as a group of people come face to face with a grotesque and murderous entity.

Storywise, then "Scarecrow" was actually enjoyable, it had just the right amount of fun and thrills, though it wasn't a particular scary movie, unless you are easily scared, of course. But still, the story proved to be entertaining and well enough thought through.

As for the acting, well people were doing good jobs with their given roles and it was fun to see Lacey Chabert in a movie such as this. She did carry the movie well.

The effects in "Scarecrow" were actually quite good. Sure, this wasn't a CGI galore such as those over the top Hollywood productions, but the effects proved effective to what they were supposed to do. The scarecrow was nicely animated and had some great details, and it didn't actually look fake at any one point throughout the movie.

If you enjoy a good monster flick, that doesn't necessarily require much thinking from the audience side, then "Scarecrow" is a good choice. "Scarecrow" managed to squeeze a 6 out of 10 stars rating out of me.

Scarecrow (2013)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Better than average SyFy flick about three adults and six teens who travel to an abandoned farmhouse to tear down a scarecrow so that it can be used in a town event. Before long there's a scarecrow killing them off one by one. You know, scarecrows can be rather creepy and we've gotten several horror films about them but most have been rather unsuccessful with the exception being DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW. I really wasn't expecting too much from this film but it actually delivered as long as you don't take it too serious and don't expect any scares. I thought the story itself from writer Rick Suvalle was pretty good as it seems he has a knowledge of the genre and knows how to milk certain scenes. One fine example of this is the opening sequence with a couple teens sneaking into a barn for some sex but you know what happens. I really liked how the story took place at this farmhouse and barn and I think the film only really started to suffer when they moved off these locations. The performances were actually better than you'd expect for this type of film with Lacey Chabert, Julia Maxwell, Nicole Munoz and Richard Harmon all doing fine work. The scarecrow itself is a CGI creation and it's certainly not as horrid as I was expecting. If you watch these SyFy movies then you know the monsters are usually horrid looking but I thought for the most part that this one looked okay. The scarecrow in the field that we see early on is much more effective though. The blood/violence level isn't all that high but we get a couple nice scenes. SCARECROW eventually runs out of gas around the hour mark and gets slowed down but fans of the sub-genre should find enough here to enjoy.

I didn't expect much of this movie and I was right about it. There is not much to say about this movie. I thought the actors were mediocre at best. The story could have been good if the movie wasn't so predictable. You have the typical high school bad students on detention. They are all like 25 years old and you wonder why they can not find younger actors to play them. Then you get the typical scenes like the car that doesn't start anymore, the girl that falls over all the time trying to escape, the girl that wants to offer another girl as sacrifice so she can escape herself etc... The only good thing about the movie was the scarecrow itself. I thought he looked pretty good. It would have been better if they had given us some background story. I will forget everything about this movie in a week.

This film begins with two teenagers by the names of "Chad" (Keenan Tracey) and "Marcy" (Lanie McAuley) walking through a cornfield with the idea of spending some time together in a nearby barn while they wait for some schoolmates to meet up with them within an hour or so. Unfortunately, they realize to their horror that there is a monster lurking nearby and it kills the two of them in a most gruesome manner. The scene then shifts to six high school students reporting to a teacher named "Aaron Harris" (Robin Dunne) to atone for earlier misbehavior. To that effect, they have all been tasked to set up a display for the 100th Scarecrow Festival being nearby and as part of their punishment they are required to dismantle-and then reassemble in town--the scarecrow hanging in that same exact cornfield. What none of them realize is the horror that is waiting for them when they finally arrive. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was one of those movies that had plenty of action and CGI to please audiences who enjoy things of that nature. It does not, however, have enough character development or background material and the absence of these two ingredients gives this film a rather shallow aspect overall. Additionally, the longer the film lasted the more the action scenes tended to resemble each other to the point that it became quite tedious after a while. In any case, although I didn't consider this film to be terribly bad necessarily, the faults just mentioned were still much too apparent for me to rate it any higher than I have. Slightly below average.

Got to say it first: I enjoyed this Scarecrow look! At first I was thinking that it is indeed original, by far, afterwards, maybe a little dumb, but after hearing the explanation in the plot, of how it got that way, yeah, hands down to this concept! I approve!

So, Scarecrow 2013: a very nice and enjoyable movie, of course you must NOT expect too much, just some innocent fun, some almost scares, the most standard horror moves, "let's split off", "let's do that", "I can't believe it is real", and so on. But overall, better than those tryhard movies, that get lost in their own work. I approve to this one, for a cheesy cliché horror night!

Really, not much to say about it, either you love it, or not. But if you do lower your expectations, and just sit, watch, eat popcorn and make fun, you might be in for exactly what you have hoped for. Fun fun fun!