Nigel P A group of students on a detention 'break': all twenty-somethings, suitably attractive and perfectly manicured. A nice-guy teacher, probably late-twenty-something, casually perfect. They're travelling to a remote field, allegedly haunted, to dismantle the great scarecrow there and have it returned to the local town in time for a festival. Kristen (Lacey Chabert), whose parents own the land, turns up - stunning and immaculate also, her job is to fish uncertainly for compliments beneath dough-eyes, from teacher Aaron (Robert Dunne) who, it turns out, is her ex. Her current boyfriend also turns up. Guess what? He's a lovely looking lad as well. All characters are equipped with the usual put-downs and quick prom-wit and, as written and played, are as blandly perfect, or as perfectly bland, as can be. All set? Alright then, let the loud noises and 'weird happenings' instantly reduce them into shrieking quiverers.From this point, all previous patchy personalities, such as they are, are done away with and the group become as one: victims waiting to happen. Only ginger outcast Cal (Iain Belcher) retains his given nervous personality, which gets him a girl, if only for a short time. There are moments in between the crashes and panicking where some of the (alleged) teens get close to 'making out' with each other, but good grief - between the horror non-events and the scriptwriters' take on 'burgeoning relationships' and scratchy voiced profundity, this is a film that refuses to affect me in any way whatsoever.I shouldn't perhaps be so grumpy: this is not for me, but it does seem to be a genre. 'Teen-slasher' will rarely go out of fashion, because it has rarely been in fashion. It has long since existed though, on the peripheries, secondary to its memorable Freddies and Jasons, feeding the spaces and silences on a first date, and not meant to be concentrated upon too much. Some listings mistakenly have 'Scarecrow's running time at 197 minutes, which would be truly terrifying. At its true length of 87 minutes, it provides nothing much, doesn't really offend, and contains a fairly reasonable CGI scarecrow but not a lot in terms of actual shivers. The main man Aaron presents limited displays of shock and resourcefulness, making sure the pearly whites are on display.

SnoopyStyle It's the 100th annual Scarecrow Festival. Marcy and Chad go into a barn to set up revenge against Nicki and Tyler but they are set upon by a mysterious creature. Nicki and Tyler have been put in detention for posting pictures of Marcy and Chad. Aaron Harris is the teacher in charge. Maris is a first-timer. Beth is the new girl. Calvin is the shy artist. Along with Daevon, the group is brought out to a farm to dismantle and bring back the original festival scarecrow. Kristen Mills (Lacey Chabert) comes out to meet her ex Aaron. She has also invited his friend-turned-enemy Eddie to make peace. The group is attacked by the creature.The detention premise is unlikely. There are plenty of unrealistic actions from the characters. The first half takes place in the daylight which devalues its horror values. The CGI creature is passable considering its TV use. The problem is that the daylight relegates it to a fake CGI creation. Even the night time has the harsh artificial lighting. The actors are all perfectly fine. The only known actor is Chabert and her biggest asset continues to be her chest. The movie never rises above being a cheaper TV horror.

TheBlueHairedLawyer 'Scarecrow' has its flaws and its moments; it certainly beats some of the SyFy channel's other movies like "Dark Storm" and "Mongolian Death Worm" but it's cheesy and the characters are shallow. The plot follows a group of teens (who all look to be in their Twenties), who go to a day-long detention repairing a farmhouse right before the town's annual Scarecrow Festival. The main troublemakers seem to be Tyler and Nikki (Nikki is called a Goth but definitely doesn't look the part and is more of a sneaky brat than anything else). Anyway, as the plot goes on, an evil entity called The Scarecrow is disturbed and begins going on a killing rampage, taking any person or animal in the vicinity.The soundtrack wasn't bad, the acting wasn't the best but was better than the usual SyFy casts, and I've gotta say, the effects were pretty good! I was expecting really bad CGI and there was some, but a lot of the effects looked great in the movie. I wish there hadn't been so much sex jokes and that type of thing, crude humor has never appealed to me or made me interested in a horror movie, but it's easy to overlook since it seems to go away once Tyler and Nikki have "bought the farm".All in all, Scarecrow wasn't great, but it was much better than I was expecting. It's worth checking out for a fun Halloween movie with your friends or just to pass the time on a Saturday night. And if you don't like it, at least you can make fun of it.

Michael_Elliott Scarecrow (2013)** 1/2 (out of 4) Better than average SyFy flick about three adults and six teens who travel to an abandoned farmhouse to tear down a scarecrow so that it can be used in a town event. Before long there's a scarecrow killing them off one by one. You know, scarecrows can be rather creepy and we've gotten several horror films about them but most have been rather unsuccessful with the exception being DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW. I really wasn't expecting too much from this film but it actually delivered as long as you don't take it too serious and don't expect any scares. I thought the story itself from writer Rick Suvalle was pretty good as it seems he has a knowledge of the genre and knows how to milk certain scenes. One fine example of this is the opening sequence with a couple teens sneaking into a barn for some sex but you know what happens. I really liked how the story took place at this farmhouse and barn and I think the film only really started to suffer when they moved off these locations. The performances were actually better than you'd expect for this type of film with Lacey Chabert, Julia Maxwell, Nicole Munoz and Richard Harmon all doing fine work. The scarecrow itself is a CGI creation and it's certainly not as horrid as I was expecting. If you watch these SyFy movies then you know the monsters are usually horrid looking but I thought for the most part that this one looked okay. The scarecrow in the field that we see early on is much more effective though. The blood/violence level isn't all that high but we get a couple nice scenes. SCARECROW eventually runs out of gas around the hour mark and gets slowed down but fans of the sub-genre should find enough here to enjoy.