Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

I gotta be honest with you and let you know that the original ‘The Messengers’ was not one of my favorite movies. I had big hopes for that movie with The Pang Brothers directing and whatnot, but that film was complete total and utter nonsense. Even for a horror flick. But after watching this movie, ‘The Messengers 2: The Scarecrow’, which I did like more than the original if not by much, some of the stuff in this movie actually makes some of the stuff in the last movie make a little bit of sense. Of course I didn’t realize this until I read what I wrote about the first one as a refresher, but I was like ‘Oh… that’s why that happened the way that it did’. Anyway, I wouldn’t risk sanity backtracking to watch the original again, but this did help it out a little bit.

Just like the last movie we have a family trying to make a farm work. But unlike the last one where Dylan McDermott really didn’t look like much of a farmer, Norman Reedus as the character of John Rollins did at least look like he belonged on a farm. The farm is struggling, money is tight but John’s hot wife Mary (Heather Stephens) is standing by her man and his teenage daughter Lindsey (Claire Holt) isn’t nearly the bitchy brat that Kristin Stewart was in the first movie. There’s also a young son Michael (Laurence Belcher) who has mystical evil sensing powers which always comes in handy.

Then John finds the scarecrow. The son with the evil sensing powers warns dad not put it up, but his mighty friendly neighbor Mr. Weatherby (Richard Riehle) advises him that he’d be a straight up fool not to put up the scarecrow, especially considering crows are devouring his corn crop. He also brings the recovering alcoholic some ice cold brew. Can you say Satan? Sure enough the scarecrow goes up and the next day not only are the crows gone, but they are dead. Straight up dead. I mean endangered species list type dead. His dying crops all of the sudden are flourishing. A smarmy banker who wants to foreclose on his farm is run over by an 18-wheeler, and not only

that he drops his swollen wallet and his Rolex in John’s field before he died. How fortuitous. John was going to turn the expensive watch over to the proper authorities but Satan over here advised John to pawn it and get that loot. And about Satan, he has this hot wife (Darcy Flowers) with a pair of power nipples who likes to douse herself with Dasani and get naked in John’s cornfield. Yes this stuff seems strange but it’s all cool to John.

The authorities don’t think it’s so cool because every time somebody goes out to John’s house they end up dead. His wife doesn’t think it’s so cool because in addition to her husband practically raping her, it really bothers her that he doesn’t seem to mind that all the visitors to their home are ending up dead. And the boy who senses evil knew stuff wasn’t copacetic from the get go.

Eventually John himself realizes that stuff ain’t so cool either, especially when Satan and Satan’s wife inform him that this Scarecrow Slayer really doesn’t like family members all that much. Now the race is on as John tries to save his family from the wickedness that is The Messenger… I guess. I still don’t know who or what this messenger is and I’m two movies in.

If I had known that my main man Todd Jensen was in this movie playing the asshole banker I would’ve watched it a lot sooner. I just did an entire episode of Totally Twisted Flix on the ‘The Deaths of Todd Jensen’ and since he’s not listed on the IMDB as a cast member I missed this one. I did like this Straight to Video sequel to The Messengers more than the first one, mainly because this movie was far more lucid than the first movie. The first film, while it was easily more stylish and more impressive visually, simply didn’t make any kind of sense where this sequel followed horror convention almost to a fault and at least made sense within the nonsensical confines of the horror genre.

A thousand dead birds, constantly buzzing flies, random women with huge nipples showering with Aquafina, regenerating scarecrows and rich dudes dying at the same rate as those birds might not make sense in a normal world but it all makes perfect sense in the horror movie universe.

Norman Reedus did a fine impersonation of Jack Nicholson in ‘The Shining’ and the similarities between those two movies are rather stark so this version of ‘The Messengers’ won’t come off as the most original offering around and it doesn’t do anything unique or different from what anybody who has seen a movie or two in the last twenty or so years is going to expect, but when judging it against its predecessor, which is basically how I am measuring this movie, I thought it was superior.