MESSENGERS 2: THE SCARECROW

John Rollins is a farmer and lives with his family on a farm in North Dakota. Unfortunately for the Rollins family, things are not going well, as the field seems particularly arid and the meager harvest is plundered by the crows that infest the area. To scare away the birds, John sets up an old scarecrow found in the barn and from that moment, things seem to go wonderfully. However, unsettling events begin to happen and people who, in one way or another, disturb the tranquility and success of the Rollins family die in mysterious circumstances. There is a small subgenre in the vast field of horror cinema that deals with killer scarecrows; it is difficult to come across these films, many are even unreleased in Italy, and among the most famous are "Dark Night of the Scarecrow" (Frank de Felitta, 1981), "Scarecrows" (William Wesley, 1988), "Night of the Scarecrow" (Jeff Burr, 1995) and the putrid trilogy of "Scarecrow", started by Emmanuel Itier in 2002 with the eponymous film and continued with "Chase to Scarecrow" (David M. Latt, 2003) and "The Return of Scarecrow" (Brian Katkin, 2004). Now there is a new entry in the mini-subgenre and it is "The Messengers 2", which in the original version displays as a subtitle precisely "The Scarecrow". As can be inferred from the number after the title, "The Messengers 2" is the sequel – rather the prequel – of the film that marked in 2007 the debut of the Chinese brothers Pang in a Hollywood production. But we are definitely far from the Pang film, since this prequel goes in a completely different direction, explores a completely different genre and, in doing so, connects poorly with its predecessor, because it creates narrative continuity problems. Not that these macroscopic differences are a bad thing, given the very low quality of the 2007 film to which, strangely, this direct to video even manages to be superior. If "The Messengers" was the classic Asian-derived ghost story that eventually turns into a psycho-thriller, "The Messengers 2" is from the start a psycho-thriller that gradually turns into the supernatural. The two films are almost divergent, therefore, they start from different premises and end up in places that do not even touch each other. And this is positive for the sequel, since following the footsteps of the predecessor by making a carbon copy of a film that in turn copied everything that was copyable would have been a poor choice. Instead, "The Messengers 2" can at least boast of being an original sequel in its own way. Let's clarify immediately that the film directed by the Dane Martin Barnewitz is certainly not what can be considered a good film, rather we are faced with a mediocre work that has few chances of being remembered over time. The direct to video nature is evident from the first images, the general anonymity that befalls the entire film speaks clearly and the slow rhythms of the film almost suggest a timeline of events more suited to a TV fiction. The film, in fact, starts and continues for most of its duration with a slow pace, dwelling a lot on the protagonist of the story, a Norman Reedus ("Masters of Horror: Cigarets Burns"; "Pandorum") decidedly in form, and his descent into paranoia. Naturally, dwelling on the most introspective aspect of the story is not a flaw, rather it is often the grave lack of many horror films, but "The Messengers 2" seems to suffer from weakness, as if it were formed by an accumulation of elements dictated only by the need to stretch the broth in view of the grand finale. And indeed, what leaves a good mood after watching the film is precisely the ending where the knots come to the comb and the scarecrow that we have always seen crucified in the middle of the Turkish wheat field finally comes into action. The action and gore effects are limited to a few sequences and some elements inserted by the screenwriter Todd Farmer ("Jason X"; "San Valentino di sangue") seem almost useless to the narrative economy of the story (John's neighbors?), however, in its entirety, despite many flaws, the film works discreetly; if nothing else, they found a fair compromise to give life to a sequel to the Pang film: to distance themselves as much as possible from the latter.