William Wesley’s Scarecrows
opens in media res. Curry (Michael Simms) and his band of
commandos have just robbed a military base of three-point-five million
dollars. They have also taken hostage Al
(David Campbell) and his daughter
Kellie (Victoria Christian), and, of
course, they’re dog Dax (Dax Vernon),
and they are using the family as getaway airplane pilots (let’s never mind how
the Unites States military is completely unable to track the aircraft; it
doesn’t matter). After Bert (B.J. Turner) robs his fellow robbers of
their loot and parachutes out of the plane, the gang give chase. But the secluded, rural area they land in is
watched over by something that doesn’t take too kindly to their intrusion
(okay, it’s the titular scarecrows).
I’ve thought about robbing a
bank. I’m positive just about everyone
on Earth has at some point or another.
I’m sure it’s not easy, but it also has the allure of being better than
real work (or at least the kind of work where you have to punch a clock for
eight or more hours a day and answer to The Man). The thing that holds most folks back from doing
it is the danger (coincidentally, also the reason it’s attractive to some). It’s a risky business once you point a gun at
someone and demand all the money in their vault. Will they acquiesce, or will they resist and
attack (doubtful, but there’s always that wild card)? Then there’s the whole angle of the money
being traceable, the ability to actually make good your escape, the resources
needed to hideout and possibly even have to assume a new identity (on paper, if
nothing else). A person, therefore, has
to weigh the risks versus the rewards, because even if you get clear with the
money, there will always be stumbling blocks, big and small, any of which can
wind up with you either spending time in the pokey or spending time in a grave
(but only one of these has the possibility of your eventual release, except in
horror films like Scarecrows). And that’s why, for me, I’d rather just work
some overtime to make ends meet.
Scarecrows are looked upon as
being several things, symbolically speaking.
They are primarily protectors in most of the public consciousness. They guard crops from scavengers, but they
also guard (or used to guard) villages from pillagers, because they give the
illusion of a live person standing guard.
Their motionlessness has an offputting quality when viewed from a
distance, and their slack, faceless heads can be just as disquieting for what a
viewer projects onto them. Scarecrows
are also regarded, according to Carl
Jung, as belonging to The Shadow aspect of the human psyche. This is a part of our personality that lies
in the unconscious, and what it reflects, in part, is the darkness within us
(I’m really, really simplifying here).
Both of these facets are at play in this film.
On the one hand, the scarecrows
in the film are guardians of the Fowler land (I don’t recall the family
actually being named in the film, but they are listed as such in the
credits). Their house, their ancient
Ford F100, the ground it’s all built on, is sacred to them. There are three crosses, supposedly
indicating where the three Fowler men are buried, and at least one scarecrow
stands vigil at this site (we’re never given a clear geography of where all of the
scarecrows are, whether they circumscribe the property or are interspersed
throughout it, et cetera). When the bank
robbers land on the premises, they violate the sanctity of the Fowlers’ property
(the fact that the family is also buried there only magnifies this violation). Nevertheless, unlike actual scarecrows, the
ones in this movie aren’t there only as visual deterrents. They are punishment for wrongdoing, and the
commandos have transgressed fourfold.
First, they stole what didn’t belong to them. Second, they killed military personnel during
commission of their crime. Third, they
kidnapped innocent people to aid in their escape (probably the least serious of
their offenses). Fourth, they trespassed
where they didn’t belong. All of these
things are punishable by death in the film, but the last of them is the most egregious
from the perspective of the antagonists.
The reason I say this is because even Al and Kellie are candidates for
victimhood, though they committed no crimes in the eyes of the law. The Fowlers are just protecting what’s
theirs, but they also serve tangentially as retribution for injustices outside
the scope of their land.
On the other hand, the scarecrows
are totems of the bad in humanity. There
is some reference to the Fowlers possibly being into Satanism or some other
occult hoodoo, and the scarecrows are avatars of this evil, unable to die,
cursed to inhabit their estate for eternity.
Similar to their role as executioners for the guilty, they are also
reflections of the Shadow within the human characters. After all, the commandos are not especially
nice people, and their inner ugliness is essentially projected outward,
manifesting as the scarecrows which hack up their victims and transform them
into scarecrows as well. The scarecrows make
concrete this unconscious aspect of the characters’ psyches.
I remember seeing this film way
back when it first hit VHS, and at the time, I really liked it. Viewing it today, through more critical eyes,
I can see its flaws much more clearly. The
acting is a little sketchy (with Simms
basically imitating Joe Pilato from Day of the Dead) but not as horrendous
as it could be. The characters
themselves are individuated enough to be distinct, though they’re really not
too terribly interesting (and I was surprised that of all of them, Kellie, the
one who should be the most sympathetic, is the one who is the most
one-dimensional). But my biggest problem
with the film is its first half (actually closer to first two-thirds). It has a decent setup that draws you in, but
once everyone hits the ground, the film becomes a series of scenes of the cast
wandering around in the woods talking and not saying anything of any
consequence whatsoever or propelling the minimal plot forward. These scenes are punctuated (I suppose you
could say bookmarked, but they really feel more arbitrary than that) with many
(many, many) closeup shots of the scarecrows just hanging out. These moments are meant to build dread and to
mount anticipation for the ineluctable jump scares/kill scenes, but they
honestly just become tiresome after so much screen time is wasted on them. That said, the final half hour or more of the
film does begin to pick up, and the filmmakers finally do start to give us some
intriguing scenarios and interactions.
If only they had worked harder to do the same for the rest of the
picture leading up to this point. Scarecrows is still a mildly
entertaining horror film, but its strengths also serve to heavily underscore
its weaknesses.
MVT: The makeup effects in
this are impressive, and the scarecrows each have a look that is visually
striking. The gore also works quite
well, and there are some truly gruesome moments that help keep things a bit
lively.
Make or Break: The opening
sequence on the plane nicely sets up what’s going on and what’s coming up, even
with some silly moments like a grenade that would have exploded long before
anyone is able to get to it and a character casually playing his harmonica
while smoke fills the plane’s interior (as you do).
Score: 6.25/10
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