Director: Jeremy Rudd
Year: 2025
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Scarecrow Slasher
Plot:
After escaping from a mental asylum, a group of friends find themselves being stalked and killed by a maniacal, psychotic killer dressed as a scarecrow, which forces them to put their Halloween plans on hold to uncover the truth about the killer’s connection to them to stop him.
Review:
Overall, this was a decent enough if entirely problematic indie slasher. Among the few positive attributes with this one comes from the manner in which the killer scarecrow is able to handle the various interactions throughout here. Granted a simplistic but workable backstory involving a brutal escape at a psychiatric hospital that grants him a release out into the community, the idea here works well enough with giving this a competent setup and appearance with the scarecrow-like design to complete the presentation well enough. That makes up the later scenes involving the killer stalking the community and her group of friends for a solid enough time, which makes the encounters here focus on the gruesome kills and extended stalking, which offer up some great, suspenseful moments involving the scarecrow getting some fun interactions and kills. These all make for an intriguing enough genre effort at times.
There are some issues with this one that hold it down. The biggest drawback to the film is its wholly weak and underwhelming story, which leaves it with numerous unanswered questions. The whole thing taking place in a town that fails to recognize the escaped mental patient, with no authorities or facility personnel looking for him based on such a silly oversight, makes little sense here, based on the severity of reclaiming him would be, and makes the story feel unfinished. That is mainly due to the shortened running time, where it never has much of a chance to fix anything beyond taking scenes straight out of other genre fare wholesale without putting them into a more original context, since many features are so obvious it’s hard to overlook that. With other big scenes here being recreated wholesale to the point of encroaching copyright infringement due to the severity and closeness with which this copies scenes right out of another major genre feature, it leaves a sour impression here rather notably.
Moreover, there’s also a series of obnoxious ideas here that make everything feel as though it’s an unabashed remake of the original to add in more gore and excessive content. The main change-up here is the manner of the hospital escape as it’s not a clerical error but rather just slaughtering workers there until he gets a chance to get free, but otherwise there’s not much to be said here for the main changes beyond that are just maddening excuses to pad out the running time from an original that was already struggling to reach feature length. From sluggish montages of characters running for a jog, cleaning up the mess left behind by the killer, or arguing over who’s responsible for the escape, this all makes for a bland time overall. Combined with a cheap and obvious presentation that barely hides its limitations, there are some negative factors to this one.
Overview: */5
A watchable if entirely flawed feature overall, this one is pretty decent for what it is, as long as the majority of the flaws on display aren’t too detrimental to viewing. Those with an appreciation for this kind of genre effort, who enjoyed the original, or don’t mind the issues, will want to give it a shot, while most others out there should heed caution.
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