The Cornfield That Time — and Logic — Forgot
There are bad horror movies, and then there are Syfy original horror movies. Scarecrow (2013) proudly belongs to the latter category — that magical cinematic subgenre where continuity, acting, and common sense are treated like optional DLC. Directed by Sheldon Wilson and starring Lacey Chabert (Mean Girls, this is not), Scarecrow is the 26th entry in the Maneater series, a franchise that seems to exist solely to prove that television executives will greenlight literally anything with claws and a title.
This movie was marketed as “a terrifying new creature feature” — which is accurate only if your greatest fear is mediocre writing. What it actually is: The Breakfast Club meets Children of the Corn meets a blender set to “liquefy.”
The Plot: A Harvest of Stupid
Let’s be clear: Scarecrow doesn’t have a plot so much as a series of bad decisions filmed in rural Canada. The story begins with two teens sneaking into a barn, because apparently cornfields are where romance goes to die — literally. Something grabs them from the floorboards and yanks them into the abyss, proving that in this movie, gravity kills more efficiently than the monster.
Enter our protagonists: Aaron (Robin Dunne), a high school teacher who’s been sentenced to a field trip from hell, and Kristen (Lacey Chabert), his ex-girlfriend, who somehow gets roped into this mess. They’re accompanied by a group of students with personalities that can be summarized as: “hot,” “loud,” and “dead soon.”
Their mission? Retrieve an old scarecrow from an abandoned cornfield for the town’s 100th Scarecrow Festival. Because nothing says small-town pride like digging up cursed farm decor. Within minutes, people start disappearing, the scarecrow starts killing, and the audience starts Googling, “Can I sue Syfy for emotional damages?”
The Scarecrow: Discount Batman Villain with a Rake Fetish
The titular Scarecrow — the supposed menace of the movie — looks like someone built it out of mulch, fishing line, and regret. It’s not so much scary as it is… sticky. The creature appears to be made of old leaves and pure pettiness. Its powers include teleportation, selective invincibility, and the ability to kill characters only after they’ve finished a full paragraph of bad dialogue.
Syfy clearly blew the budget on fake blood and Lacey Chabert’s coffee, because the CGI is the kind of bad that feels personal. Every time the monster lunges, it looks like an unfinished video game cutscene. By the time it gets shredded by farm equipment, you’re cheering — not because the heroes survived, but because you can finally rest your eyes.
The Characters: The Cornfield of Broken Tropes
The film’s cast of victims — excuse me, “characters” — are so one-dimensional they make cardboard look nuanced.
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Aaron (Robin Dunne): The world’s least inspiring teacher. He has the charisma of a damp encyclopedia and the leadership skills of a traffic cone.
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Kristen (Lacey Chabert): The protagonist who spends most of the film looking shocked that her career led her here. She screams, she swings an axe, and she delivers dialogue with the solemn gravity of a woman trapped in a lifetime Syfy contract.
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Maria (Nicole Muñoz): The “good girl” archetype who exists solely to be impaled for emotional effect.
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Beth (Brittney Wilson): The designated coward. She betrays everyone multiple times and still somehow manages to have more screen time than people with integrity.
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Calvin, Tyler, Nikki, Daevon: The disposable extras whose deaths range from “predictable” to “hilariously unnecessary.”
The script tries to establish tension between the ex-lovers, the teacher, and the students, but the dialogue sounds like it was written by someone who’s only ever spoken to humans via AOL Instant Messenger. Every emotional scene feels like a deleted moment from a CW pilot about sad farmhands.
The Dialogue: Written by a Committee of Scarecrows
Let’s talk about the script — or, as I like to call it, the true villain of the film. Gems include:
“It never sleeps, it never dies, it can’t be stopped…”
“Hear their cries, the Scarecrow lives to kill us all!”
It’s the kind of dialogue that sounds like it should be chanted around a campfire by drunk middle schoolers.
Every scene drips with faux gravitas, as though the characters think they’re starring in The Exorcist instead of A Birdemic Halloween Special. The result is unintentional comedy gold. When someone solemnly announces, “We have to burn it,” you can practically hear the director in the background whispering, “And we also have to make it to commercial.”
The Pacing: A Marathon of Mediocrity
The movie clocks in at about 90 minutes, though it feels like 300. The pacing is as uneven as a field after a tractor accident. Moments of frantic running and screaming are interspersed with long, awkward pauses where the characters seem to be waiting for the script to catch up.
Every time someone dies, the camera lingers just long enough for you to think, Wait, didn’t we already do this scene? The repetition is so blatant it feels like the scarecrow is union-mandated to kill people in identical ways for consistency.
By the third act, you’re less interested in who survives and more interested in whether Syfy’s legal department survived approving this.
The Production: Fear on a Budget
The production design looks like it was sponsored by the local Home Depot clearance aisle. The “abandoned cornfield” is clearly a very occupied cornfield with bad lighting. The farmhouse, barn, and shipyard (yes, there’s a random boat scene — don’t ask) all look like rejected Goosebumps locations.
The scarecrow’s movements are a mix of practical effects and CGI that never agree on what movie they’re in. One minute it’s a guy in a suit; the next, it’s a PlayStation 2 rendering glitch. The continuity is so inconsistent you half expect to see the boom mic wearing a trench coat.
Lacey Chabert: Final Girl Energy Meets Existential Dread
Bless Lacey Chabert. She tries. She really does. She screams, she runs, she axes the monster to death — twice. But she’s also clearly questioning every life choice that brought her from Mean Girls to Maneater #26: Agricultural Terror.
By the end, she’s covered in mud, blood, and disappointment. Her final battle on the boat (yes, the scarecrow can swim now, apparently) culminates in her setting it on fire. It explodes, and for a brief moment, you think maybe she’ll get a reprieve. But then you remember: she’s still in Scarecrow.
Final Thoughts: Stuffed with Nonsense, Sewn with Regret
Scarecrow is proof that even scarecrows can be overworked. It’s not scary, it’s not funny, and it’s not even campy enough to be memorable. It’s just aggressively mediocre — a film so committed to being bland that it transcends entertainment and becomes a public service warning against watching television in October.
Still, there’s a kind of perverse charm in how earnestly it fails. It’s a horror movie for people who don’t like horror — or quality. It’s what you’d get if Jeepers Creepers was remade by a PTA committee.
Verdict: 1.5 out of 5 stars.
Because while it’s not scary, it is horrifying — in the way watching your Wi-Fi signal drop during a Zoom meeting is horrifying. The true terror isn’t the monster in the cornfield. It’s realizing someone got paid to write this.
