Scarecrow

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.

It might not be on the same level as bigger productions of the same genre. But thanks to it's consistent and equal quality in all aspects of the movie, it manages to not be as terrible as some other low budget movies. If you're having a day where you don't mind investing 90 minutes of your life and you're in the mood for a nice, easy, horror flick then I can recommend it. The VFX was actually much better than expected and elevated this movie visually which made every scene with the scarecrow in it quite enjoyable. The creature itself is quite scary and the way it manifest hasn't been done like that before so it felt fresh and interesting. 5 out of 10 for me.

A group of well-deserving teens (who look way too old, but that's nothing new) spend some quality detention time running through corn and hiding in a haunted farmhouse & legendary site of several murders. The legend isn't apparently a myth, and they pay for their trespassing. It's been done before, and definitely better, but not a bad Sy-Fy offering. Nice and Halloween-y, starring that guy who I finally recognized from "Sanctuary" about halfway through.

Random thoughts - Very good to see Lacy Chabert again. Why doesn't she do more? Why is there a ripe field of corn planted on what's supposed to be long-deserted land?

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.

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.