Scarecrow (2002)

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

What a disappointing movie.As others have noted, Lester, the main character, does look like he is 30 instead of in high school.The soundtrack is horrible. I kept having to turn up the volume when the characters were speaking and then quickly turn it down when the wailing music started blasting. Very distracting and annoying.Speaking of sound, it almost looks as if the movie was dubbed. Some people's voices did not seem to match their looks or their mouth movements. It really doesn't matter though because the script is sooo bad they should have just made it a silent movie. When was the last time you heard a high school boy say he made it to "third base" with a girl? The terrible dialogue is no excuse for the acting, which is even worse. The guy who plays the mother's boyfriend looks like he just stepped out of a 70's porno flick. Lester's mother appears to be the same age as Lester. The only appealing character is the girl who is nice to Lester. Other than the scarecrow's make-up the only thing about this movie that I liked were some close up shots of the moon. That's how bad it was. I didn't even watch the last 15 minutes.

I desperately want to give this movie a 10...I really do. Some movies, especially horror movies are so budget that they are good. A wise-cracking ninja scarecrow who can implement corn cobs as lethal weaponry...definitely fits this 'budget to brilliance' system. The depth of the movie is definitely its strong point and the twists and turns it implements, keeping the audience at the edge of their seats really drives the creepy...ninja... puberty-stricken... pre-thirty year old student...non-cowboy drawing...wise-cracking...son-of-a-bitch scarecrow into the limelight as the creepiest horror icon of the year. All I can really say is, 'can you dig it' and recommend watching movies such as Frankenfish if you enjoy this sort of hilarious horror.(WHAT THE HELL WERE THEY SMOKING!?'

Very nice development of story and characters in the first 10 minutes or so, and Tiffany is great to watch, but when Lester becomes the Scarecrow, it becomes a stupid and simple ordinary teenage nerd revenge melodrama, completely pointless, except to the nerds who can identify with Lester and who wish they could become immortal scarecrows, but are destined to end up lesser mortals. A high kill quotient that basically makes no sense but to thrill the pea-brained violence junkies who exist on make-believe mayhem in video games and these type of trash movies. A much better exercise in nerd revenge is the hard to find Twisted Brain, with a better realized teacher murder scene. And then at the end credits we are treated to a "thanks for the inspiration" to several great horror directors such as Argento, Romero, Craven, Hooper, etc, who all must be cringing to see that they are being thanked by these moronic horror film production posers.

"Scarecrow" is a halfway decent scarecrow movie.**SPOILERS**Back in Emerald Grove High School, Lester Dwervick, (Tim Young) is the stereotypical loner who the whole school picks on and makes fun of. Only Judy Patterson, (Tiffany Shepis) seems to understand him, but no one else does. While staying home one night, one of his mother's dates picks on Lester and he is accidentally killed in a cornfield next to a scarecrow. After this, there are some pretty violent murders in the town, which no one can explain. Judy feels she is somehow responsible for them, and as the townspeople start dying one-by-one, the police start to investigate the myth that Lester is a scarecrow, which no one believes. By now convinced a scarecrow is doing the killings, begin an all-out search before it kills again.The Good News: Scarecrow movies are a hard commodity to review. For one thing, scarecrows are just naturally creepy, and any film that exploits them will have a creepy looking lead scarecrow. This one proudly continues the trend with a creepy looking lead scarecrow. The mask is pretty well-done, with a series of stitched crosses in an elaborate patterns across the face that produces a pretty threatening looking design. His look is quite creepy, and really steals many of the film's scenes. The action is pretty nice, never really letting up and keeping a pretty consistent tone throughout. Mainly due to a series of attacks in the middle section of the film, it especially races rapidly toward the end of the film, making these last two sections fly by pretty quickly. The kills are plenty varied, and feature a great deal of originality. We get a decapitation with a scythe, beaten to a pulp with a metal tray, a corn-stalk into the back, having a series of vines impaled into the back and having a sharpened corn instrument thrown into the throat, among other equally impressive and innovative kills. To have them spread through a large body count makes the deaths all the better.The Bad News: In spite of what so many others have said, there was only two things about this I didn't really like: the martial-arts knowing scarecrow and the picked-on high school loser who becomes the protagonist. The fact that a scarecrow exhibits marital arts abilities, while a nice idea and quite original, just makes the viewer indulge in a series of eye-rolling whenever it happens. It doesn't make the scarecrow any scarier and just makes him laughable instead. There isn't enough to say about the cliché that is the high school loner who gets picked on. It's so overdone and useless that nothing can make it work well. It's a motive that really doesn't need to be used anymore. Despite that, there are parts that many might not like about it. I'll let you discover them, I won't spoil them here, but they didn't bother me all that much.The Final Verdict: So, the creature's actions are pretty laughable and it has a weak motive with the killer, it's still not that bad. It's not for everyone, though, so be careful with it. It's got enough to like, but still some for others.Rated R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language, teenage drinking and drug use and off-screen noises from sex scenes