The Messengers 2: The Scarecrow (2009) - Horror

The Messengers 2: The Scarecrow (2009) - The original "The Messengers" was a flawed film with a fairly decent premise that children are more inclined to see ghosts than adults. In that story the Solomon family through this device find out what happen to the former owners of the farm. Although not a great film it did create an atmosphere and focused the story on the teen and child's story that then included the family. In the NON sequel the Messengers 2 the entire premise of the first movie has been dismissed. The house is the same but that is the extent of the similarities.
It is a story focused on farmer John Rollins (Norman Reedus), who has a family makeup which mirrors the original a teen daughter(Claire Holt) and a younger son (Laurence Belcher) and a pretty wife Mary (Heather Stephens). This is where the similarities end, the kids are barely used in the script by Todd Farmer. The wife is the secondary focus but only as a way of driving the character journey John goes on. He is a down on his luck corn farmer who has a bad crop, lots of bills and a crow problem. He finds behind a hidden door in the barn a scarecrow and when he puts it up his luck changes.
Of course these things a a bit monkey paw-ish, the real estate guy from the bank who wants to foreclose on his farm, and the friend of his wife who wants to take her from the troubled marriage are taken out of the picture for him. Good luck for John but bad because they are both killed after seeing him. The stress is also getting to John and there are several scenes where he runs out into the cornfield and hears childrens voices. Is he losing his mind? Is the scarecrow taking care of his problems. Will director Martin Barnewitz stop swing the camera around him in the corn field?
Unfortunately the writing by Todd Farmer , who SO obviously has never been a farmer, gives too much away. Instead of letting John's story unfold and the audience try to figure out what the hell is going on, insanity or supernatural we get a character to fill in the blanks. Jude Weatherby (Richard Riehle) and his lovely naked wife Miranda (Darcy Fowers) are there to basically tell us exactly how everything works with the scarecrow so no worries about having to do any thinking.
The climax where a cross scarecrow comes after the family is so not worth the time put in to get to that point. Oh and it has absolutely nothing to do with that last movie. Nothing Nada. WTF! Stop, breath....
The story as a stand alone was not well executed as every time something is seen it is immediately used in the next scene and resolved, only the tractor idea made it to the climax. This could have been a psychological thriller about how stress drove one man to insanity but instead we get an evil scarecrow.
Rating (3.2) 5.0 and above is recommended Zombiegrrlz rating Skip It!