Strawstalker (2026) by George Henry Horton

Director: George Henry Horton

Year: 2026

Country: USA

Alternate Titles: N/A

Genre: Scarecrow Slasher

Plot:

Looking for new content, an online influencer decides to show his followers a video from a friend where he and his girlfriend document their trip to a new house for some new content ideas, unaware they’ve fallen into a trap for a cult that worships a supernatural scarecrow to target them.

Review:

Overall, this was a fairly enjoyable, if problematic, genre effort. Among the better elements here, even if it does ultimately present this with some of its biggest issues, is the storyline structure that provides this with the kind of solid and generally worthwhile premise. The whole idea of the main footage being presented by a content creator to his followers that shows his friend and girlfriend heading out on a trip to a house in the city to escape their normal lives and begin documenting their experience moving in for others, presenting everything as a series of video clips showing how they gradually try to adapt to where they’re living. This all manages to create a nice grounding for the gradual realization that something is stalking them in the house, as we see the shadows moving in the background or the strange, continued reappearance of the scarecrow's belongings in the yard, even after they’ve been picked up and removed, all of which creates a solid starting point that makes the found-footage format quite believable.

The turn in the second half, focusing on the realization of what the continued appearances of the scarecrow around the house, carries this rather well. The true intent of the scarecrow being a God-like being to a group of cult members servicing the area and ridding them of outsiders looking to invoke more modern ways of life instead of keeping things to their simplified, stripped-down status is a solid enough way to go about this, with the initial presentation and series of encounters here trying to escape the indestructible creature before being captured and offered up as sacrifices later on. This makes the wild finale, where they try to navigate away from the cult and its supernatural deity following them around and get to safety, ignoring the cult’s malicious plans and dealing with a means of survival, come together incredibly well with a nice bit of spectacle thrown into this alongside the fine effects work on the scarecrow itself. These all manage to give this a lot to like.

There are some issues that hold this back. The main drawback in the film is the overall presentation of everything, with the film utilizing the content creator as a host for the footage of his friends and their encounters while staying at the house. This is an immensely unsatisfying feature with the lack of explanation for how he acquired this if most of it was livestreamed to their followers originally, based on the reaction overlay window on-screen showing people continuously commenting on what’s going on. Why he needs to be there to do this is unnecessary and never explained, it switches viewpoints to show several different cameras documenting what’s going on at specific points, and the whole presentation of the film itself comes off as immensely flawed, especially when there’s constant switching of a chat window to being blank, which is immensely distracting. The other detriment here is the jarring tone, where it tries to pretend that these self-indulgent, obnoxious influencer couple that display a potentially toxic relationship as being funny and endearing, yet the whole thing is straight-faced serious, which leaves a wholly inconsistent tone throughout here. The campy attitude is dropped halfway through, as if it realized it wasn’t working, and goes for that straightforward approach to its own detriment, lowering this one overall.

Overview: **.5/5

A wholly likable found-footage genre effort, this one has some worthwhile elements to it that hold it up while still being brought down by a series of flaws that affect it pretty heavily. Those with an appreciation or interest in this kind of genre fare will have a lot to like here, while most others turned off by these factors will want to heed caution.