Scarecrow Gone Wild 2004

Sam Caleb Roehrig is one of the freshmen on the baseball team who face hazing from upperclassmen, including his friend Jack Matthew Linhardt. Because Sam needs a scholarship to attend college, Jack Matthew Linhardt helps by giving him a blood sample so that no one would know he was diabetic and he could still make the team, giving him a real shot at a scholarship.

Although Jack promises his Coach Ramsey that there will be no hazing, the rest of the team—and some young women—continue the hazing in a haunted cornfield, turning a rite of passage into something much darker and more dangerous. The hazing ritual reaches a bitter point in the cornfield when the baseball players mistake one of Sam’s diabetic attacks for him trying to start a fight, a misread that changes everything.

They tie Sam up to the scarecrow and leave him for dead, a cruel act that twists into something far more terrifying. Sam becomes the evil Steven Worley in the role of The Scarecrow, a figure bent on bloody revenge against his tormentors and pretty much everyone else in the film. The only way for Jack and his friends to stop the Scarecrow is by getting their friend out of a coma, a task that proves nearly impossible because the nearest hospital is under construction.

After a brutal series of attacks by the Scarecrow, the students finally figure out how to stop him and bring back their friend. The story then jumps three weeks ahead to show Jack and his new girlfriend—one of the survivors of the scarecrow’s assault—getting ready to pick up the coach for a red-eye flight, while Sam and baseball jock Mike are preparing to attend a sorority party. Just as things seem to be turning around for them, Sam murders David Zelina as Mike and the coach. He then chases Jack and his girlfriend into a chapel where they battle for the final time.

The fight intensifies as the Scarecrow briefly unveils a troubling new power, firing what looks like electrical currents from his hands. In a shocking turn, Jack somehow becomes the Scarecrow and, in a climactic moment, impales himself on a nearby cross, bringing the nightmare full circle. The film lingers on the consequences of cruelty, the thin line between bravado and tragedy, and the eerie idea that revenge can take on a life of its own long after the hazing has ceased.