review from IGN
John Rollins (Norman Reedus) is struggling to keep his languishing corn crop alive as his debts rise and his farm is in danger of going under. It doesn't help that the crows won't leave his fields alone. A potential solution arises when he discovers an ugly old scarecrow hidden away in his barn. His sensitive son is terrified of the thing, and insists he get rid of it, but John's new neighbor (Office Space's Richard Riehle) convinces him to put it up in his field. The minute he does, strange things start to happen around the farm, as a dark force slowly takes over not only the land, but John himself.
He hears the sound of a little girl in the fields, finds dead crows scattered all around and gets a visit from the police after a banker about to foreclose on the farm turns up dead. As these weird occurrences build up, John starts changing too, staying up late and taking up drinking. After watching his neighbor's hot wife wet herself down with a bottle of water and strip off her dress (after all, what's a B-grade horror film without a little topless nudity?), he even pulls his wife into the house for a little rough – and non-consensual – sex. But by the time John finally connects the scarecrow to what's happening, it may be too late to save his farm, and his family.
It may be helpful here to take a moment to fill in some of the back story of this project. Once upon a time, there was a script for a horror movie called Scarecrow. It was interesting enough and scary enough to attract the attention of Sam Raimi's Ghost House Pictures, as well as acclaimed Hong Kong directors Danny and Oxide Pang. As it usually happens, the script went through many changes during the production process, eventually becoming virtually unrecognizable from the original concept. It even underwent a title change (without a scarecrow element, the name didn't make much sense) and became The Messengers. The film went on to gross $55 million worldwide, and while that's not quite enough to justify a sequel, it's plenty of incentive to put out a direct-to-DVD sequel. Which brings us back to that original Scarecrow script, because when you've already got a ready made screenplay waiting in the wings, why bother coming up with something entirely new?
And so we have The Messengers 2: The Scarecrow, not a sequel but a prequel of sorts, based on the script which inspired it. I say a prequel of sorts, because it doesn't exactly lead into the events of the original theatrical film. In fact, it completely contradicts them. I may as well warn you now that I'm about to talk about certain plot twists in The Messengers that may spoil the ending for those who haven't seen it, so proceed at your own risk. The link between the two films is John Rollins, played by John Corbett in the original and Norman Reedus ( The Boondock Saints) here. When we meet John Rollins in The Messengers he has changed his name to Burwell and has forgotten his past, particularly the part about killing his family in a fit of madness. It is the ghosts of those family members who haunt the sunflower farm and its new tenants, the Solomon family.
In The Messengers 2, we actually see John slowly being taken over by that madness, but the outcome is decidedly different. Basically the filmmakers have decided to throw continuity to the wind in favor of slapping on a happy ending to the prequel. Or perhaps they're making room for another film in between? Either way, it's a bit of a cop out here. And that's just the first example of the kind of low-hanging-fruit style of filmmaking you're going to find here. This is a film that takes the easy route, every time. There's nothing all that challenging or surprising about it. It's a run-of-the-mill horror film that hits every expected story beat like it's following some sort of map. Or the plot of The Shining. There's nothing here that hasn't been done before, and better.
Taking over directing duties here from the Pang brothers is Danish director Martin Barnewitz. He plays by the numbers as well, offering few of the stylistic flourishes of the original film. There are times when it degenerates practically into soft-core porn, which I realize may not be considered a criticism by some, but there are plenty of actual porn films that don't make you sit through discussions between a husband and wife about their marital issues. Where it really falls apart, though, is the ending, which is confusing in its staging and way under lit (so as to hide the low-budget nature of the scarecrow monster, I'm guessing).
The acting ranges from credible to cringe worthy. Reedus' performance falls on the positive side of that spectrum, and though he's not quite leading man material, he does a solid job of carrying the film. As his frustrated wife, Heather Stephens has a thankless role with little to do other than confront her husband over and over again, looking alternately fearful and confused. Many of the bit players, some of them hired locally on location in Bulgaria, don't seem to have perfected their American accents, which is the quickest way to pull you out of a film.
As far as direct-to-DVD films go, though, this one is not as bad as some out there. It's not painful to watch, and there are some legitimate scares and creepy moments (like when John bites into an ear of corn and finds a tooth). It just doesn't seem to have much ambition beyond delivering the bare minimum expected of a horror film, including plenty of skin and gore.
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