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I, unlike a lot of other people, actually enjoyed the original iteration of The Messengers.  I thought it had plenty of scares in it and served solidly well as a horror flick, especially given that Sam Raimi’s Ghost House Pictures was involved.  That and I loved the fact that the only one who could see these monsters was the little kid–that’s an old trope (parents out there, how many times did your kid wake you up because of “monsters in the closet / under the bed / in the dresser”?) subverted by making the monsters in question real.

But even I had misgivings about doing the second one–sometimes these things go too far.  So today, we’re going to get our look at The Messengers 2: The Scarecrow, only recently out on DVD, and see if they went too, or rather two, far.

The Messengers 2: The Scarecrow really isn’t a sequel so much as it is a prequel, going back to explore the events that happened on that ill-fated sunflower farm.  John’s desperate for a way to keep his crops safe, and with them, his family.  Thus, he turns to the old practice of erecting a scarecrow in the field.  But the scarecrow turns out to work too well, and scares off a whole lot more than crows.  Thus, John now has to protect his family–and himself–from exactly what he had hoped would help protect him.

Let’s kick this right off by saying that we’ve ALL seen killer scarecrow movies.  I have.  I KNOW you have.  We can all probably even list them, going back as far as the eighties and possibly even beyond.  And let’s be further earnest in our assessment that many of them are not what you’d call good.  On the one hand, this doesn’t bode well on the surface for this one.  On the other, well, it’s not going to be hard for it to be one of the best in the field.

I admit that the first part of the movie, devoted to showing us how dire the family’s straits are becoming, is nicely done.  I genuinely felt for this guy–and we’ve all been to that point where there’s just too much month at the end of the money.  And I have to admit, watching that turnaround when the first scarecrow goes in is a bit unsettling but downright satisfying.   And then, inevitably, when the turnaround turns around, and everything goes wrong for totally different reasons, it’s just amazing.  I know, it’s predictable, but the way they’ve done it here is actually sufficiently solid to make a good movie out of a huge block of cliches.  This is like taking a lousy flank steak that wouldn’t be good by itself, adding a few things, and making it part of a salad instead.  The shortcomings are made up for by the alterations, and that’s exactly how it goes in The Messengers 2: The Scarecrow.

I’m actually really surprised at how this turned out.  It’s actually somewhat more foreboding than the original, the only difference being that it’s lost a lot of the stylized Asian flair of the original.  The sequel is actually slightly better than the original because it’s not depending on monsters for its scares, but rather relies a lot more on the sheer force of one man going insane.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives up a seven out of ten for a rule-breaking sequel that actually shows more class than the original, plus manages to be somewhat scarier, in a low-budget way.

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