In the opening scene there are aerial shots of cornfields, then a teenaged couple meet in one of the fields. There's a sinister looking scarecrow behind them. They go into a nearby barn for sex but fall off a ladder and are injured. The girl's blood gets soaked into the straw--then the skeletal hand of the monster appears, breaking the guy's neck.
In town, it's the 100th annual Scarecrow festival. The teacher, Mr. Harris (Robin Dunne of SANCTUARY) is taking high schoolers on a bus for an all day detention. Among them is a troublemaker named Tyler and a re-headed kid he torments. The bus goes to the farm where the two were attacked and murdered. The local legend has it that this farm is haunted--and the students are going to dismantle the scarecrow and rebuild it in town for the festival. Kristin (Lacey Chabert of LOST IN SPACE), whose family owns the farm, shows up. There's an obvious history between her and Mr. Harris and we learn that she left him years ago to live in the big city. Now, she's back and needs the money--so she's selling her family's farmland. He's still resentful that she left him.
Some students start screaming. One girl is pulled through the cornfield, dragged by something. She gets away and they all run to the farmhouse, just in time. It pounds on the door, trying to get in. One of the kids tries to be a hero and goes for a nearby truck but it attacks him, feeding on his blood. This is the first time we see the creature, which is surprisingly disturbing looking. Not the scarecrow you expect. Kristin throws a molotov cocktail at it and the truck explodes. The creature survives. In fact, it can disappear into the ground and come out of the ground, sort of like the comic book SWAMP THING. The group flees to the barn and fall through the rotted floorboards. Then, the police show up, only to be slaughtered by the monster. So the survivors flee in the police truck, only to crash it when the monster appears in front of them, on the road. When they wake up it's night. They take refuge in a nearby house and the farmer who owns it holds them at rife-point until they explain themselves. The farmer believes them about the monster and he's pissed that they've brought it his way.
I judge every new scarecrow horror movie against the two best--DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW and SCARECROWS. This SCARECROW isn't nearly as good as those classics but it's leaps better than the majority of killer scarecrow flicks. It's basically a chase movie, with the body count steadily increasing as the monster kills them one by one. It's unpredictable, to a point, but you know it's probably going to be the woman who lives at the end. It's definitely worth checking out for the unique looking monster.