Scarecrow Gone Wild starts as high school teenager Mike (David Zelina) & his mates decide to to give a 'hazing' to wimpish diabetic Sam (Caleb Roehrig) as an initiation of some sort. Mike & his mate decide to take Sam to a corn field, tie him to a cross next to a freaky looking scarecrow & leave him there all night, sounds like fun right? Well, things backfire when Sam goes into a diabetic coma after suffering from a hypo & the vengeful spirit of Sam passes into the scarecrow which comes to life & starts to hunt down the kids responsible for Sam's unfortunate life-threatening predicament. Can Sam's best mate Jack (Matthew Linhardt) & his girlfriend Beth (Samantha Aisling) save the day & Sam's life?

Written & directed by Brian Katkin Scarecrow Gone Wild is the third straight-to-video entry in the Scarecrow series & while I haven't seen either of the previous two after seeing Scarecrow Gone Wild I'm certainly in no hurry to change that situation that's for sure. The script actually has an almost decent premise as the wronged soul of Sam seeks revenge & his friends have to keep the real Sam alive somehow but the way it is told is poor & I suppose that basically it's just an irrelevance to the fact that this is a film about a killer scarecrow running around killing people in not very gory or imaginative ways. Having said that there are one or two scenes here which save it from a one star rating, the fart gag in the corn field is funny & something a lot of immature blokes might do (like me), the bit when two guys bury their mate in the sand & then stand over him & pee on him is also rather funny in a laddish juvenile way & a cool bit when some guy starts singing an awful song so the scarecrow throws a pole which impales him! However these OK bits are few & far between & as a whole it's a silly, boring, poorly written teen slasher film with highly annoying character's who irritate. It' also very predictable & has a stupid twist ending which doesn't really feature the scarecrow at all which is a problem as when you watch a film called Scarecrow Gone Wild you expect to see a scarecrow go wild & I have to admit he looks quite cool as horror character's go.

Director Katkin does a reasonable job here actually although what on Earth is up with that hospital at the end & all that neon lighting everywhere & the fact there is only one patient there & two members of staff? The cinematography is much better than the usual straight-to-video low budget horror film of late & there's some nice, if totally unrealistic, lighting. The film lacks any real scares or tension & some of the medical terminology used throughout is a bit iffy to say the least & I say that as an insulin dependant diabetic myself. There's not much gore here, there's a couple of scenes where some actor has some fake guts placed on their stomach to represent them being gutted but it looks pretty fake, there's also a burned face & a couple of impalement's but little else. There's a fair amount of naked female breasts on show if that's your thing.

Technically Scarecrow Gone Wild is pretty good considering some of the low budget abominations I've sat through recently, unfortunately it's still a poor film overall. The least said about the acting the better.

Scarecrow Gone Wild isn't as bad as some of the straight-to-video horror crap that's been turning up recently but having said that it's not that much better & it's still a bad film when all said & done. Not recommended, the two previous entries are Scarecrow (2002) & Scarecrow Slayer (2003) both of which also went straight-to-video.

Sentiment: negative