“We ain’t gonna stand for any weirdness out here!”

129. Scarecrow – Richie Tankersley Cusick

Pamela, who has recently lost her husband and son, has just been in a car crash in the middle of nowhere and wakes up on a farm where they’re essentially doing everything like there’s no reason to modernize. She was carried there because a sort of psychic small child named Girlie knew she was there and got her saved so that she could end up meeting the whole family in the backwoods: Seth, the extremely gruff and grumpy father figure who clearly doesn’t want her there, Rachel, the mother who keeps saying, “Mercy!” and has to do all the chores ladies in this situation do, Franny, the willful teenager who kind of wants to get out, Micah, the mostly silent fearful boy who is missing a hand, and Girlie, the youngest, psychic one.

No one will straightforwardly communicate with Pamela about why exactly it’s impossible for her to leave once she has rested some. No one will be straightforward about what this family’s deal is, it’s all weird obfuscation and “you should talk to” followed by someone else who doesn’t communicate well because they’re all hiding something. One thing they are straightforward about is that they all make scarecrows and then all of them have to be burned. All of them. So when Franny wants to keep hers, it freaks out Micah and it seems like it’s freaking out Micah because Seth won’t like it…but…is Micah actually a small child psychopath?

It has to be annoying to be trying to ferret out who is actually a murderous backwoods psychopath when you have nothing to work with but your suspects. It’s like no one wrote anything down on this farm like ever. And I really mean it’s annoying for me. I didn’t feel like Pamela was ever actually in danger of anything but being further confused by the various family members and then I abruptly left being on her side when she suddenly decided she was in love with Seth. It came absolutely out of nowhere for me. So by the end when the killer breaks their facade and is just getting after that whole dead people at the dinner table kind of thing, I was dead to reacting to the final twist.

 

Snuffy isn’t good at hiding things…like how much she enjoys napping, which isn’t dangerous, per se.