SCARECROWS is an interesting movie to recommend, in some respects, because it’s not really a great movie, simply from a structural standpoint. It does some stuff that you objectively shouldn’t do in movies, like sudden narration, hearing someone’s inner monologue for just a scene, to hear their thoughts as they discover a truck doesn’t have any keys or gas—things that are absolutely expressed visually without the need for that. And yet it creates such an impressive, otherworldly atmosphere that other, better movies often don’t come close to replicating.
It’s got a genuinely unsettling feel to it, and that atmosphere makes it a terrific watch especially during the Halloween season. SCARECROWS is a perfect marriage of a reprehensible cast of characters and a short runtime. It would be tough to live with this group of characters for too long. These people are so bad that when one of them conceives the explanation that what’s happening to them may simply be that they are dead and in Hell, the others clearly consider it as a legitimate possibility.
The movie follows a group of thieves in the immediate aftermath of a heist, with the film opening just as one of them leaps out of a plane with all of the money and lands in a field near an abandoned farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, and that is a terrific starting point. We know nothing and, from there, we’re off and running. Other than the pilot and his daughter who are held hostage, none of these people are good, and they never get better, and they never learn any kind of lesson, and they don’t need to, either. They’re a perfect match for this runtime, to watch them try and squirm their way out of an impossible situation.
One of my favorite things about this movie is that there’s barely any information given as to how these scarecrows are alive or where they came from. The characters don’t know that and neither does the audience. We are literally dropped into this situation alongside them. And I love that the farm seems to wake up when they get there and go to sleep again when they live, as if the place itself is a thing that is hungry and waiting.
To me, SCARECROWS feels very much like an episode of an anthology series of the ‘80s or ‘90s like TALES FROM THE CRYPT, TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE, or MONSTERS. I know I wasn’t the only one who would watch some of those episodes and think, “Man, I would watch a whole movie about that.” SCARECROWS is that movie. I’m a sucker for the simple, rustic aesthetic of killer scarecrows, and this is my go-to scarecrow flick, even more than the very good and more widely celebrated DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW.
This is a movie that might be best paired to a certain kind of viewing experience. If you saw it in a theater, you might be underwhelmed, but if you caught it at midnight on cable, it’s that kind of jolt of an unexpected surprise that could keep you talking about it for weeks. A top-notch midnight monster movie.