'Messengers 2: The Scarecrow' DVD Review

A hollow Shining rip-off.

As a prequel to the 2007 haunted house movie The Messengers, Messengers 2 makes little sense, contradicting the events of the first film, in which a family moved into a farmhouse that had been the site of horrific occurrences years earlier. This movie attempts to explain those occurrences, but it ends up as a lazy retread of The Shining.

Jack Torrance -- er, John Rollins is a down-on-his-luck farmer who finds an old scarecrow in the back of his barn and decides to put it up to ward off crows, one of the causes of his problems. His young son, who has a gift of sensing things supernatural (Sound familiar?), warns him "It's bad," but he doesn't heed him, and soon his luck changes: the crows die, his irrigation works and his corn grows high as an elephant's ear.

However, John's "luck" turns sinister as people who cross him begin to end up dead. He puts two and two together and burns the scarecrow, but it returns to its spot, unharmed. With all the deaths and John's talk of evil scarecrows, his wife grows concerned, straining the marriage.

It turns out she has reason to worry, as a creepy neighbor has begun advising John to get rid of his family, goading him by suggesting that his wife wears the pants in the family. Will John do it? Will Stephen King sue for plagiarism?

Writer Todd Farmer, who wrote the witty screenplays for My Bloody Valentine 3D and Jason X, phones it in here with an embarrassing number of similarities to The Shining: father driven insane, boy with sixth sense, ghostly man advising father to kill his family, seductive female ghost, little girl ghost whose father had gone crazy and killed her, etc.

Danish director Martin Barnewitz, who directed the pedestrian Room 205 -- basically a rehash of Asian ghost stories -- comes to America for this even more blatant rehash.

The DVD

Special features include commentary.

Movie: D+
DVD: D+