Horror Movie Review: Amityville Scarecrow (2021)

We’ve given up trying to keep track of these movies with Amityville in the title. Our definitive ranking has all the ones we’ve seen to date in it but still, on a regular basis, more and more pop up. Such is the free nature of putting Amityville in your title in an attempt to convince audiences that your movie is in some way related to the main franchise.

So here we are again… another Amityville film. This time with the horrendous title of Amityville Scarecrow (previously titled Amityville Cornfield which is marginally worse). If you can live with that, try this on for size. Amityville is now in England somewhere. OK then.

Directed by Jack Peter Mundy and written by Shannon Holiday, Amityville Scarecrow stars Kate Sandison, Amanda-Jade Tyler, Andrew Rolfe, Chelsea Greenwood and Sofia Lacey.

Two sisters, Mary and Tina fell out years ago when the latter stole the former’s husband. They have been forced to reconcile when their mother dies and they have to deal with her estate. Part of which is an abandoned caravan park. One that used to have 112 Ocean Avenue sitting on it. Long since demolished, as one character will later reveal, the land is still cursed.

To add even more convolution, the cursed land drove a handyman to molest and murder a bunch of young girls. He was hunted and murdered by the parents (it’s all very Nightmare on Elm Street) and is now seeking revenge in the body of a scarecrow. A scarecrow that is now hunting Mary, Tina and their daughters Lucy and Harriet.

It is as silly as it sounds but fails to hit the fun mark by spending far too much time on internal family drama and the cursed land. Which is strange, as the former has little impact beside showing off some range from the actors and the latter is nonsensical to the point of comedy.

As far as supernatural slashers go, Amityville Scarecrow isn’t the worst and the titular villain looks decent enough. The ‘hide and seek’ elements of the film are often the best moments as we get the odd bit of tension and some decent deaths. As far as movies related to this franchise goes, it’s far from the worst you’ll see.