Director: Lucy Townsend
Year: 2017
Country: United Kingdom
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Scarecrow Slasher; Horror/Comedy
Plot:
While trying to grow up in life, a teen and her friends try to pass the time until a special townwide celebration involving decorative scarecrows can take place, but when they come to life at the behest of a scorned friend to do her bidding and seek revenge on the town must band together to get away alive.
Review:
Overall, this was a pretty decent if somewhat troublesome effort. Among the brighter features here is the way the first half builds to the eventual rampage of the creatures. Getting an in-depth look at the life of the friends in the town who are shown to have work and relationship issues, this all comes together for a generally light and breezy setup with just the right amount of comedic touches to keep the atmosphere light. That also goes along with the conflicting backstories here about the origins of the creatures and the purpose for the town's celebrations to put them up and celebrate the occasion which provides a fun start to things.
With that setup featured here, the second half comes off incredibly well with this being a series of incredibly effective light-hearted stalking and confrontations throughout the town. As the town goes through several fun rampages through the community where they come to life against the unsuspecting victims while chasing the group around the town leading to some fun encounters along the park, the cosmetic shop, and the seemingly abandoned police station which also highlights the aggressive behaviors of the scarecrows rather nicely. As the finale takes place in the abandoned factory that has some tense encounters and the few instances of gore here, these are enough to make this likable.
There are some issues holding this one back. One of the biggest factors here is the extremely overlong setup about the group of friends in the town which isn’t necessary for a film this short. Dealing with each of the storylines as individual elements here works well enough but it takes a toll on the pacing here when it takes half an hour to even get the backstory of the titular creatures as the majority of the time here on many of the issues here. As well, there’s very little to fear here about the lackluster motivation behind it which is immensely underwhelming and lame to have it carry out as it does, and combined with the low-budget feel here are what bring this down.
Overview: ***/5
A generally fun and enjoyable lighthearted genre effort, this one manages to bring about a rather fun style and atmosphere that manages to overcome quite a bit of the flaws featured here. Those who appreciate that style or approach as well as those who enjoy this kind of cheesy genre effort should have a lot to like here while those who are turned off by those factors should heed caution.
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