Scarecrow (2013)

Disappointment for a huge fan!

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

With the Scarecrow Festival on the horizon, teacher Aaron Harris is giving out punishment for six students serving detention.Their task is to help Aaron's ex-girlfriend Kristen fix her family farm before it's sold. But the cornfields circling the farm come with a legend that never sleeps, never dies, can't be stopped, and hear their cries. When the students play a terrifying game of cat and mouse in the cornfield with what they think is a wild animal, Kristen tries to convince them that the Scarecrow is very real, and rejuvenated by the blood of its prey.......Apart from the not too bad CG of the titular creature, this is nothing more than a cheap knock off of Jeepers Creepers one and two.We have the obligatory biggish name actress in the form of 'megastar' Lacey Chabert, and the bloke who was in the straight to DVD sequels to Cruel Intentions, and The Skulls. We are talking high profile here...Add you stereotypical bunch of high school students, and you have a recipe for a film that sounds good on paper, but the finished product is just a waste of time for everyone involved.All of the cast try to do their best with the poor script, and the reasoning behind the shape shifting of the Scarecrow is never fully explained. So we get nothing more than silly kids running around into dark places, thinking they can kill something supernatural by stabbing and shooting it. Have they never seen a low budget horror film before?Of course they haven't, They are in a horror film, which is meta.And meta rhymes with better, which the writers must do next time...

This is an almost good horror flick: with good cinematography, good actors (Lacey Chabert is quite good throughout) and a well-done CGI Scarecrow.The problem is the plot.First, the movie doesn't properly setup the history of the monster and it doesn't setup the initial monster-meet on Kristen's (Lacey Chabert) old family farm. As mentioned by others, why is there corn growing on a supposedly abandoned farm? But these errors could be forgiven if the rest of the plot held up. It doesn't.In the first half of the movie, various teens do stupid things (wander off alone) and promptly get killed, fair enough - that's the standard trope for this type of movie. In the second half of the movie, the remaining teens, adults do smart things (run fast and far together) and promptly get killed, which is ridiculous.It's a shame because there's a decent horror movie in there somewhere, just needed a script rewrite or two.

For this genre the movie is really good. It has a good cast, and as some have mentioned earlier, the female cast get no complains from me. I agree with other reviews that the CGI are quite good, and you can't really complain on acting in this kind of film it's not why you watch them. There are only a few things I got hung up on. One, the monster don't have any resemblance to a scarecrow. Two, there is not a shred of explanation to the story what so ever. If they had mad any kind of attempt to explain why there was a monster and why it did what it did, I would give it a higher rating. Sadly there is none. But besides that it well worth watching.

I can be rather short about reviewing this flick. It's not scary at all but still you keep watching it to know how it will end. The story itself you have seen a thousand times before and Jeepers Creepers (2001) isn't far away. What turns it a bit down is that the scarecrow always is done in CGI. It doesn't look that bad after all but sometimes it do looks cheap. Luckily the wounds it creates on it's victims do look gruesome. The flick starts in a gory way and from that point it continues without a lot of boring moments. But as I said, you have seen it all before and there are already a few flicks out concerning scarecrows. Let Husk (2011) be much better than this one but it's watchable. I guess youth will do have it's scary moments but again, the CGI do sometimes attracts you more than the story itself due a few continuity mistakes. Let be the car crash the most important one. At the end of the day its' a CGIcrow with some nasty wounds being involved.Gore 1/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 2/5 Story 2,5/5 Comedy 0/5