WARNING: This Article May Contain Spoilers
It will probably become really obvious just by reading further down, considering the word is featured in three of the below films, but I bring you the fear of scarecrows! Fear forms part of their creation of course, but that wasn’t intended to be for humans – more to scare, well, crows. However, the phobia wouldn’t exist, and it wouldn’t have been used as a ploy by The Creeper in Jeepers Creepers 2, if someone somewhere along the line wasn’t scared of them….
Scarecrows
So, this is a little different to some of the others in this article, considering that this is one of two films where the scarecrow isn’t the antagonist – instead victims are turned into scarecrows. I’m not sure which is more disturbing if I’m honest. There’s an irony to this though, as shown at the very beginning of the film – using live scarecrows will attract the crows instead of scaring them off. I guess if they’re feasting on your victims, they are staying away from the crops! Even for a modern film, they spend way too much screentime on our teenage protagonists getting naked, which is frustrating when it feels like we have a Mick Taylor from Wolf Creek level villain on our hands. 40 minutes passes before the main characters even encounter him and for me, that is a long time! This meant that they end up getting on my nerves for long enough that I don’t mind what happens to them in the end – especially Devon, but then she slightly falls into that trope that Cabin in the Woods plays on. Let’s just say that the film on the whole could have been done so much better!
Dark Harvest
There was a little bit of confusion with this film. Even though it is credited as Dark Harvest on IMDb – the opening credits refer to it as Death Harvest instead. In truth, it feels college-made, especially considering the dead dog they find is real, but not in a negative way. It seems to add a little more realness to the film, however, the dialogue is a bit awkward and there’s long scenery shots before getting back into the story. This film seems to play on tropes like isolation, ignoring the harbinger and the age old ancient Indian burial ground. Even though, two people are murdered right at the beginning of the film, it takes a long time before the scarecrow strikes again, around an hour of the film to be exact. With a larger cast than I expected, this is a long time to wait. However, that’s not to say it doesn’t start wiping them out in quick succession but then with 27 minutes remaining you kind of have to. I felt like the story Alex tells the group is supposed to lead to some incantation that awakens the spirits of the burial ground and the scarecrow itself, a little like Evil Dead, but it never happens.
Hallowed Ground
The opening to this film reminded me a little of The Wicker Man, it seems these people were sacrificing an outsider dressed as, you guessed it, a scarecrow. It becomes a little hard to talk about this film as, I guess, you could say that this is half scarecrow and half cult horror considering the latter part of the film is based around the preacher doing what he can to bring back the founder of the town, the man who would originally burn people as scarecrows in the first place. From the moment Liz meets this preacher, the scarecrow becomes rather irrelevant to the story – considering that the spirit that possesses it in the first place decides to take human form instead by possessing the Sheriff. From this point onwards, this film becomes rather useless as a scarecrow horror other than the fact that it seems the townspeople try to turn Liz into a human scarecrow – a little like a couple of the other films in this list. Well, that’s what I was expecting anyway.
Dark Night of the Scarecrow
It’s a rare thing, in slasher films that is, to not feel sorry for the victims but you know what the men in this film absolutely get what they deserve – Hazelrigg most of all, the nasty piece of work that he is! Now, I won’t pretend that the opening of the film didn’t remind me a little bit of Frankenstein’s Monster and the little girl by the lake to the point that even I was expecting him to harm her. I guess you could refer to this film as a revenge slasher, considering the reason these men are attacked by a scarecrow is to avenge the death of poor Bubba who never laid a finger on little Marylee. Truthfully, this film is more like several nights of the scarecrow, considering it visits them one by one but only ever in their fields as far as the viewer can tell – standing like an omen of their upcoming death. That is until the final death scene, when Hazelrigg is finally killed and our killer is revealed.
Bride of Scarecrow
The opening to this film the words on the screen I mean not the actual first scene of the film reminded me of Jeepers Creepers a little. Especially with the mention of a 48 hour cycle. For a plot that has so much promise, because there’s something pretty creepy about a scarecrow stalking the land for his murdered wife, the execution of the film leaves so much to be desired! Just the acting alone in the death scenes are terrible! I had hoped that maybe a little bit of ingenuity behind the deaths, given the interesting plot idea, and I guess there slightly is as one of the first murders is committed using a stable gate, but it just doesn’t save the rest of the film, especially as it feels like senseless violence in places. I was a little confused on the timeline also; when May arrives with her friends and boyfriend, is this supposed to be the same 48 hours as the opening scene or a new cycle? Because if it’s the same…. wow they got the paperwork done quickly! I guess the only saving grace for this film is that it doesn’t have a happy ending…
Husk
You know earlier on, I said that Scarecrows had a decent plot which could have been done a lot better. Well, I would say this film is proof of that. The balance of the group is different, with it being a mainly male dominated group with only one female, there is less of a focus on sex. As you can guess from the comparison so far, this is the other film where our victims are the scarecrows instead of it being the antagonist. In a weird kind of way, you could also say the scarecrows are both the victims and the antagonists as those who are attacking Natalie and her friends are dressed as scarecrows to! There are so many things that make this film disturbing, like the fact that it seems the victims are possessed to make their own masks as well as we see the attackers in a way that feels like you aren’t really seeing them at all. What I will say however, is that I didn’t feel the flashback, or I guess vision, was necessary as it seemed to take me out of the suspense of the film itself. I get they were going for a Cain and Abel backstory, but it had no impact on the story.
