Watch Messengers 2: The Scarecrow For Free

I love this movie so much

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Tired, predictable, and dull for stretches. It's never scary or suspenseful. The acting is weak, with Norman Reedus trying his best as the lead character but he's just woefully miscast here. He's about as believable as a farmer as he would be as the King of England. His son in the movie is played by an annoying child actor. Claire Holt plays his daughter in her movie debut. The role isn't great but she's fine in it. The wife character is terrible and there just to service a few clichés. So much of this feels I have seen it before in better movies. On the (very shallow) plus side, Darcy Fowers has a couple of very nice nude scenes. Hey, that's something, right?

Some years ago, distribution company Ghost House Pictures acquired a screenplay written by Todd Farmer in order to make a movie about the supernatural experiences suffered by a family on a remote farm.However, when screenwriter Mark Wheaton joined to the project, he decided to substantially change the story and adjust it to the structures from Asian horror cinema.The result was the atrocious movie The Messengers.2 years after that movie, Ghost House Pictures decided to wheel out Farmer's screenplay to make a movie out of it and sell it as a prequel with the title Messengers 2: The Scarecrow.Needless to say, my expectations for this film were minimum...however, I ended up taking a nice surprise with it.It may not be an excellent film, but it is competent and it is hugely superior to The Messengers.Because of the trailers and title from the film, I expected Messengers 2: The Scarecrow to be an absurd "slasher" film with a scarecrow killing people.And, on some way, it was like that...but not on the way I expected to see.The emphasis from the movie is not on blood and deaths, but on the atmosphere of angst which generates the credible situation from the main characters.The alleged supernatural events keep their ambiguity until the end, making us to ask ourselves if there is any evil influence on the farm or if everything is due to the frail mental state from the main characters, exacerbated by their anguish and untrue future.I was surprised of finding those mature elements on a straight-to-DVD prequel.As for the cast, Heather Stephens makes a competent work, but Norman Reedus tends to exaggerate without noticing that a more subtle performance would have been more appropriate to the tone from the film.The screenplay is generally good, but the characters occasionally do stupid things, whose bad decisions make some things convenient.And the ending is not bad by itself, but it does not seem to totally suit in the context of the movie.As for the direction, Martin Barnewitz shows a good control of the minimalistic narrative, and he also made a competent work on the "jump" scenes.Finally, I liked to see the absolute absence of digital effects.If it was not for the unnecessary incursion in the horror genre the movie makes in the ending, I would consider Messengers 2: The Scarecrow as a thriller with subtle supernatural details which emphasize the drama and make the atmosphere richer.However, I cannot deny the fails from the movie, and the fact that it is not very memorable, so I can recommend it, not as a great movie, but as a competent prequel which ended up being much better than the previous film.

For the first part I actually liked this movie: it's entertaining, has a good pace and the acting of Norman Reedus and Heather Stephens is pretty good. We've seen some scarecrows in horror movies before and although they're all (supposedly) scary by nature, they made this one a real mean bugger to look at! The evil acts of the scarecrow are rather subtle in the beginning, apparently it drives other people to their death from afar, by inducing car-accidents and suicides (unfortunately out of our view). It does this out of some sort of commitment to the main character of the movie, farmer John Rollins, who found this old scarecrow hidden somewhere in his barn and puts it in his dilapidated cornfield (not knowing of course that the hideous thing is evil, although his psychic little son DID warn him!). Where the scarecrow comes from or why it's evil is never really revealed; we do see some strange ghost-like kids wander around, which suggests some prior doom lurking over this shabby farm, but we're never given any explanation. Not that it matters much, in the first part of this movie the horror elements seem to be less important then the psychological developments in farmer Rollins' mind, and the way his family, especially his wife, deals with them. Which by the way made for some fine involving scenes.In the second half of the movie there are some more gruesome details and we see vague images of the scarecrow dragging his scythe behind him. And there's a strange neighbour who gives some free advice-from-hell (and a free roll in the hay with his sexy wife to boot)to Rollins, who doggedly follows this advice and gets more and more into supernatural trouble! Still, up to this point, the movie was more atmospherically creepy then a real shocker. But unfortunately the producers wanted some grand finale, and all of a sudden the menacing scarecrow changes into a preposterously stumbling and shrieking live monster that has to be overpowered (in a surprisingly simple way) by the joint efforts of the whole family. Well, they all must have had a good laugh on the set while filming this epic battle! The final scene (one of the non-identified ghost-like kids gathers the remnants of the defeated scarecrow in a bag and hides them in a secluded corner of the barn) suggests an open ending, and since this movie seems to be a prequel to a prior movie "Messengers", it COULD have made sense, albeit not for me, who did not see this original movie. So what the connection between the two is I cannot say. Knowing the exploitation-routines regarding sequels and prequels, probably no connection whatsoever!

I didn't expect to enjoy this flick. Typically, creature feature + STV = mildly entertaining dung heap. However this film was surprisingly good. Not a gore fest but a few nasty bits. This is more of a suspense thriller. It reminds me of the first Halloween or Nightmare on Elm Street. They wanted to scare you not just gross you out. This film was a lot like that.The overall tone was creepy, I watched it on my computer on a Tuesday morning and was enthralled. It had some really creepy moments and it keeps you guessing until the end if this is just a plum crazy farmer, or a supernatural evil.I totally recommend this movie. It has nothing to do with the first Messengers which is disappointing although not horrible, but it captures the same kind of classic horror movie genre the first one did.