(Streamed via Vudu)
The Made for TV Movie, Dark Night of the Scarecrow has its share of ardent followers. I never found it to be particularly great, but it was better than many similar ‘80s TV horror flicks. Considering the film’s cult following, it seems odd that they waited forty-one years to make this low budget DTV sequel. As far as forty years too late sequels go, it’s not terrible or anything. I’ve certainly seen worse this month, that’s for sure.
Chris (Amber Wedding) and her son Jeremy (Aiden Shurr) move from the big city to a small rural farming community. They aren’t in town very long when several people begin turning up dead. Could the local killer scarecrow legend be to blame?
I can’t tell if Dark Night of the Scarecrow 2: Straweyes is trying to honor the Made for TV feel of the original by having most of the kills occur offscreen or what, but the results are kind of weak. When we seldom do see the carnage left by the killer scarecrow, it’s pretty tame. In his defense, writer/director J.D. Feigelson (who also wrote the original) does set up the kills in a competent manner and manages to sometimes punctate them with a clever touch. (Like when the farmer’s glass eye pops out.) I just wish he hadn’t been so frugal with the red stuff.
Had we had some quality kills, it might’ve been easier to overlook some of the film’s other shortcomings. The biggest drawback is the fact that it withholds its connection to the original for a good chunk of the running time. The whole Witness Protection subplot eats up a lot of screen time too. This shit wouldn’t have cut it on a lackluster episode of Nash Bridges, let alone a four decades later DTV sequel to a Made for TV horror movie.
AKA: Dark Night of the Scarecrow 2.
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