Scarecrows



A group of five mercenaries are on their way to having an excellent night. They’ve just robbed Camp Pendleton and run off with over 3.5 million dollars, kidnapped a pilot and his daughter to fly them out of town, and are so far ahead of the authorities that they’re on their way to being home free assuming they can just make it past the Mexican border. But right on the eve of their success Bert, one of the mercenaries, decides to stab them in the back by stealing the money and parachuting after it. His former partners are pissed and chase after him, but quickly become confused. The farm they’ve landed in seems abandoned, but the electricity still seems to be working and the fields seem to be full of countless creepy scarecrows hoisted up on wooden crosses. It doesn’t take long for the remaining mercenaries to realize that something very fishy is going on when they can’t find Bert, but Bert instead finds them…only he appears to already be dead, with his organs gone and a bag’s worth of money shoved into his body. As more of them wind up missing or dead, the previous race against the authorities quickly becomes a race against whatever the hell it is that seems to be hunting them.



With Halloween only a day away I figured it was only right that my final film for the month be a straight-up horror film and finally settled on this one. I’ve heard a bit about Scarecrows before. Mostly that it’s one of the few horror films to utilize killer scarecrows, which should be obvious by the name and the poster alone. But I’ve also seen it listed on several people’s cult classic lists over the years, and I’ve read some very complementary things about it as a result. So I figured with all that praise it couldn’t be too bad, ya know? And now that I’ve seen it, yeah I was right, it’s not too bad. But… Eeeh, I think some people were perhaps being a bit too nice to it. Because, yeah, it’s okay, but I’m kinda not seeing why people seem quite so fond of this thing.


^{Is it the dog? It must be the dog. He is awfully cute.}

To be fair, the movie does get several things right. The atmosphere for instance is absolutely excellent. Between the creepy barren house and the abandoned cornfield everything is dark, dreary and appropriately claustrophobic. Which you would probably think would be hard to pull off in a giant, open-ass field. But you know what, between the film’s continually oppressive darkness and the omnipresent corn stalks that are literally everywhere, they actually managed to pull the feel off quite successfully. So kudos to them for that.



Even the effects are rather well done, especially for a low-budget film such as this. Some of the violence is more implied than outright shown, either because they happen right off screen, or because of the angle they’re filming at, but there are some quick moments of effective, grisly bloodshed in there too. Maybe not enough to keep the gorehounds happy, but I think it’s sufficient and well done enough to at least keep them mildly entertained for a bit. And even the lower end stuff on display is surprisingly effective with how sinister it is. I mean, most of the scarecrow masks look like they’re little more than molded burlap sacks with some hay and other leafage glued to them. But even with them being so ridiculously simple, they’re so well constructed and well lit that you can see how easily freaked out someone could get accidentally coming upon one in the dead of night. They’re really a testament to how good a simple, yet effective design can be.







I’ve since read how some people had some trouble with the film’s bare-bones plot, but… Meh, that’s a generalized issue with slashers, and there was enough given or at least implied so that I wasn’t confused as to what was going on. Sure, I would have liked the start to have been a little faster and to have been told a little bit more about who the hell the scarecrow people are, because I KNOW there’s more of a story there, but I can live with what I got. So I thought that was fine.

No, instead the biggest problem I had with the movie lay with the characters and writing. And what it basically boils down to is that most of these people are NOT reacting to things the way I would expect them to. Like, their actions, reasoning and motivations seem to be determined by a dice roll. And it all really starts with Bert jumping out of the damn plane and then goes downhill from there. I mean, yes, his motive was obviously greed based (they’re ALL greed based), with him wanting to steal all that money for himself. I’m not that dense, I get that. But it’s also clear that this fool had no discernible plan for his betrayal beyond “kick the cash out of the cargo hold and hope for the best.” He didn’t know where they were, he had no strategy, and he had no means of escape after jumping out of the plane. So what was he going to do? Land in the middle of nowhere and drag 155 pounds of 50 dollar bills (I used a weight calculator!) around with him to god-knows-where and hope the others just give up?


^{Duuuuuuuuh huh?}

And the others really don’t fare much better in the logic department. Each one of the mercenaries eventually comes to the conclusion that they need to cut their losses and leave. But then the movie will have them conveniently forget that and have them get distracted by a $20 bill five minutes later. It’s a bit annoying. Not to mention this also happens to showcase the strangest kidnapper/kidnapped relationship I think I’ve seen in a movie. It’s perhaps the quickest infliction of Stockholm AND Lima syndrome ever. Like, sure they’re bloodthirsty mercenaries who kidnapped a man and his teenage daughter, but gosh they feel really bad about it. When the daughter’s father ends up scarecrow’ed to death the kid gets pissed and slaps the chick who’s basically had a gun pointed at her for half the film and the mercenary looks like she feels so bad for the girl that she acts like she wants to give her a hug. But then later when another Merc has a mental snap she forgets her grudge over her dead dad and actually tries to talk him down… And he actually looks like he’s listening! Because fuck my partners, lets listen to the waif-y teen girl I’ve known for 3 hours instead. And YET ANOTHER ONE risks his life to chase the kid’s dumb ass down to try to get her safely back to the plane. So they go from threatening her at gunpoint to doing everything in their power to keep this one kid alive. Like, who the hell are you people? Cause I’m pretty sure you ain’t the same ones we started the movie with. It just feels SO weird.


^{Like, she just looks so distraught for her. I can’t get over it.}

Overall though, Scarecrows is a perfectly serviceable middle of the road slasher. It’s got some great atmosphere and visuals, and while the acting isn’t great it isn’t all that bad either. But the plot is kinda bland, it’s slow to start and the characters often act dumber than a sack of moldy rocks, especially towards the end of the movie. Thankfully though those visuals ARE nice and do make up for a lot, so the movie is still pretty gosh-darn enjoyable. So if you’re an 80s slasher fan I think it’s probably worth at least one viewing. It’s not something I’d be putting on any of my personal hidden gems lists any time soon, but it is pretty fun.

Scarecrows is available on a variety of streaming services.

Scarecrows is also available on DVD and Bluray.

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