Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with the next installment of A Movie A Day: Halloween 2010 edition!
[For the entirety of October I will be showcasing one horror film each day. Every film is pulled from my DVD shelf or streamed via Netflix Instant and will be one I haven’t seen. Unlike my A Movie A Day or A Movie A Week columns there won’t necessarily be connectors between each film, but you’ll more than likely see patterns emerge day to day.]
Holy shit what a horrible movie. Why didn’t you guys warn me this movie was so bad? I thought we were friends!
Friends don’t let friends watch Scarecrows. Put that on the poster.
Maybe if I watched this drunk with Patton Oswalt this would be a fantastic movie experience, but stone cold sober alone on my couch it was torturous.
I understand low budget filmmaking, I understand the constraints, but goddamnit if you want to make a movie at least understand how movies are made before you try. Easily 40% of this movie is ADRed (dialogue recorded after filming) and filled with such gems as “There’s a house over there” cut to a house. I’m glad they clarified that or else I would have been lost.
ADR is tricky, but when done well or even competently it’s fine. Here the filmmakers just didn’t give a shit. We’d hear a guy talk in a medium shot where his mouth clearly isn’t moving. Are we supposed to believe this is his inner narration?
But not giving a shit is pretty much this entire movie. The writer/director William Wesley didn’t give a shit about casting anyone that could act, he didn’t give a shit about following any logical through line, he didn’t give a shit about learning how to make a movie, he didn’t give a shit about ripping off Aliens at every possible opportunity.
It seems the only thing he did give a shit about was the gore effects, which usually is enough for me. I can sit through the worst Friday the 13th movie if the kills are clever enough, but here there’s just not enough to make it worth the insufferable dialogue and worst of the worst line delivery.
And really, there are only a couple of instances of interesting gore, most notably a facial prosthetic that has a person’s lips ripped away that pops up at the tail end of the movie.
Wanna know another brilliant thing that happens in this movie?
Okay, so the premise is a bunch of mercenaries steal $3 million in military payroll, hijack a plane, its pilot and his teenage daughter. We don’t see any of that, of course, because that would mean actually seeing something happen. That might be good filmmaking, so of course it’s not in this movie.
They’re betrayed by a character named Bert because apparently just going all the way and calling the backstabbing sleazeball character Burke was crossing the rip-off line for them. What Bert does is toss the money out of the plane and follows it down, parachuting away from the plane.
Smartly he tosses a grenade as his bon voyage before jumping out of the plane.
Unluckily for him, he picked the grenade with a 50 second timer. Don’t you hate it when you throw a grenade at someone and they have time to talk about it, let it roll away, talk about it some more and then the dumb one picks it up, not knowing what it is, holds it for a few seconds before it’s thrown safely away from the intended target?
I guess ACME made that particular grenade.
Back on the ground, Bert looks for the money and finds instead a ton of creepy Mexican scarecrows. He drives around a little bit, finds the money and is massacred by the scarecrows. In the meantime, the betrayed mercs land the airplane and show up in time to find scattered money, a shit-ton of scarecrows and a creepy abandoned house.
Trust me, the movie playing in your mind right now is a hundred times better than what is actually recorded. One of the lady mercs has a perm, okay? Secretary hair does not belong on a badass.
It really does feel like Wesley watched Aliens and thought he could do it, but with killer scarecrows. He takes the formula, complete with the survivors thinking they’re safe back on the plane and no wait! There’s one on the plane! If you wanted any proof that it takes skill to be a director watch this film and Aliens back to back. After you’re done hating life for sitting through Scarecrows you’ll say, “You know, Avatar had a lot of problems, but that James Cameron could be in a coma and direct a movie better than Scarecrows.”
Final Thoughts: I’m not hard to please, especially when it comes to ‘80s horror. But I need something, guys. I need a good performance, a fun actor, a passable script, clever and well-executed gore or, barring all that, something stupid and fun. Of all that, Scarecrows can only pull off being stupid. It is not fun or competent. Just a moldy turd.
Currently in print on DVD: YES
Currently available on Netflix Instant: YES
Upcoming A Movie A Day Titles:
Sunday, October 31st: RAZORBACK (1984)
One more left! One day ‘til Halloween and I’ve yet to think of a costume or pick my BNAT application picture. I have a busy 30ish hours ahead of me, but rest assured Razorback will fit in there. See ya’ trick or treaters tomorrow!
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
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