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| Husk (2009) |
It is some sort of sad irony that my blog is named Scarecrow’s
Blog from the Darkside, and I use Scarecrow as my username on the imdb, yet not
one horror film has been reviewed on here featuring a scarecrow! I rectified
that today with Husk, a film released by After Dark, about a group of five on a
road trip wrecking while traveling through a rural area, with corn stalks as
far as the eye could see, thanks to crows bombarding the windshield. A
farmhouse is located within the cornfields, one of the group is missing, and so
a two of the group hope to find someone living there. What all five encounter
instead is a “curse of the scarecrow” (the best way to explain it on my part)
where a Scarecrow hunts down a victim, kills him/her, with the one killed “assuming
their place”. That sounds goofy, doesn’t it?
Killer Scarecrows are hard to
build a plot around without it being positively absurd. This film works of the “grudge
curse” plot used in Ju-on and the like. An act of malevolence (right out of the
biblical Cain and Able) resulting in a heinous murder (brother murders brother;
the father favors one brother over the other; the father abusively mistreats
one son while glorifying his favorite son), has left its curse on the land. The
murderer made a scarecrow mask and costume for the brother he later impales
with a pitchfork. There’s a scene where members of the group find a car that
suffered the same type of wreck as them…dead crows dried up on the windshield
confirm it. So someone perhaps replaced the slain brother, took his position as
Killer Scarecrow, and is now after one of the group.
As I write this, I now
realize how ridiculous the plot development is. Look, you get lots of creepy
shots of Scarecrows in cornfields with scared people trying to get back to the
road once they discovered the farmhouse and understand that where they
currently are will not protect them.
There’s a pattern, though. While Killer
Scarecrow is hunting down his/her next victim, another killed, while under a
type of catatonic undead state, works an old sewing machine (hammering nails in
his/her hand in the process so the fabric slides without a hitch!), preparing
their mask and costume to eventually become a replacement. Phew, this plot is
something else.
Anyway, the film has plenty of shots of cornfields, the
farmhouse, the sun, and the moon; the setting and the scarecrow perched on a
cross to scare away the crows that might threaten the crops. Despite the plot
absurdities, the film is really well photographed and the setting is of
significant purpose to those who made Husk. If you love your creepy scarecrows,
this film has plenty of them. Just the right amount of gore is here explaining
the savagery the scarecrows use on victims. It seems that after victims are
dead, nothing of who they were remains, and that malevolence that existed in
the brother who started all this carries over to them. That’s all I got.
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