This entry of Goosebumps brings in an often-underutilized horror monster, scarecrows. This is one of those entries that sets itself apart from many of the others in a lot of good ways. After this, I’ll be heading out on a midnight walk, potentially with some scarecrows.

Synopsis:

Jodie and Mark have just gotten off a train and are heading to their grandparent’s farm for the summer. They’re picked up by Stanley in his old pickup truck. Not to be confused with Stan Lee. Stanley is a farmhand who works for their grandparents.

Almost immediately Stanley is roasted by the kids, with Jodie thinking about how simple-minded he is. Honestly, at this point in the book Stanley doesn’t deserve it, but my opinion may change as the book gets further along.

On the ride over, Mark decides to ride in the bed of the truck, which seems like a bad idea as Stanley doesn’t really know how to drive. The book explains Stanley speeds up and slows suddenly while also taking crazy fast turns.

They approach the small town, which is called Town. I think R. L. Stine may be running out of names for towns. This is when Stanley says, “The scarecrows walk at midnight.” Only a few pages in and the title is already being dropped.

Jodie jinxes the book by mentioning she didn’t know how true the scarecrows walking at midnight would be. Great.

As they arrive at the farm Jodie and Mark can’t wait to see their grandparents. The farm mainly grows corn and has some livestock. They meet their grandparents named Miriam and Kurt.

Since it’s already in the afternoon they have lunch. Stanley has made a bunch of scarecrows, which he seems pretty proud about.

After lunch, Jodie and Mark go for a walk around the farm. The farm has fallen into disrepair, which sounds like Stanley isn’t doing his job.

They check out the corn, which appears to have gone bad. This is when Stanley’s son named Sticks show up. Yes, that’s his name. As they continue the farm tour, there are a ton of scarecrows everywhere. I think Stanley needs to do some work around the farm and not just build scarecrows all day.

Jodie is then jump scared by a scarecrow, however it’s just Sticks. Stanley claims the scarecrows are alive and has a “superstition” book he uses to bring them to life. Great, we have bootleg Victor Frankenstein.

For some reason, Stanley has also made the scarecrows look as scary as possible. I’m half convinced that Stanley has a moonshine operation going or something and he’s using the scarecrows to scare people off. This may just end up being an episode of Scooby Doo at this point.

Stanley also makes it a point to keep repeating the books title. I almost forgot what I’m reading.

At dinner, to my shock and awe, they have corn. Yeah, all I need for sustenance is corn.

The grandparents are in a solemn mood, while Stanley can’t be happier. Hmmm, something weird might be going on. This is only further confirmed with the grandparents acting weird.

Jodie points out an eight-foot-tall stuffed bear, which I’m sure won’t come up later.

Mark asks his grandfather to tell him scary stories, which is one of his grandfather’s favorite pastimes. However, his grandfather says he’s too tired. This makes Stanley happy, since Stanley hates scary stories.

That night, Jodie is having allergies, since according to her, she’s allergic to everything. She looks out the window and sees scarecrows moving. This causes her to tell Mark, who doesn’t believe her until he sees the scarecrows moving.

They go tell their grandparents, but find them asleep, so they go back to bed. Yeah, those scarecrows that are alive outside, we can worry about them some other time.

The next morning Jodie is excited to have chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast. Her Grandmother always makes them. However, arriving in the kitchen, she finds they only have plain cereal to eat. This is a heinous crime to the kids; how dare you only have plain cereal.

They tell their grandparents about the scarecrows and despite their grandparents having scared reactions, they tell the kids they don’t believe them.

Jodie proceeds to jump scares herself since she thinks her grandmother is a scarecrow.

The kids go out fishing with Stanley. Before they do this, Stanley has a superstitious belief that they need to walk around the barn three times, which is ridiculous, but at least they’re getting their steps in.

As they fish, Jodie gets jump scared by weeds. This causes Jodie to leave since the weeds caused her to fall into the water. Damn weeds, always pushing me into the water.

As Jodie walks in the woods, she finds a scarecrow. She tells the others, but only Stanley believes her.

Jodie becomes scared, so she runs to find her grandfather. She thinks she sees him in the barn, so she runs into it. Inside the barn she trips over hay. Then she gets locked in the barn.

Jodie becomes even more scared and runs up the ladder in the barn. She then jumps out the second story window using rope to help break her fall. As she plummets down, she notices scarecrows standing outside the barn. Then one of the scarecrows runs away.

Like any character in a horror movie, she decides to investigate and chases after the scarecrow. This causes her to bump into Sticks.

Jodie thinks that Sticks has been dressing up like a scarecrow to scare them. Only problem, there’s a bunch of scarecrows moving around and Sticks can’t be in multiple places at once, but Jodie doesn’t consider this.

Sticks says it wasn’t him, which leads into the song It Wasn’t Me. After pleading his innocence, Sticks goes to find his dad.

Before dinner, Stanley is carrying around his book and tells Jodie not to tell her grandparents about the scarecrows.

At dinner Stanley reads his book. Which I find unlikely, I will explain this later.

For dessert, their grandmother makes them cherry pie. Nobody likes cherry pie, and in fact, their grandfather is allergic to cherries. I think the grandmother is trying to poison her husband. Then, it’s revealed only Stanley likes cherry pie.

Like the previous night, their grandfather refuses to tell scary stories.

That night, Jodie has a multiple chapter long fake out nightmare. I think R. L. Stine owes me a few chapters now, as well as about three minutes of time. I’ll add this to his running tab of dream sequence fake outs.

The next morning, Jodie has bad allergies. They also have plain cereal again.

After breakfast, Jodie and Mark go horseback riding. As they get up to speed, a scarecrow jumps out in front of them. This causes both of them to be thrown from their saddles. Jodie is knocked unconscious, and Mark hurts his wrist.

Stanley shows up. He has Jodie take Mark back to the house for medical attention. However, I’m less worried about Mark and more worried about Jodie’s likely concussion. Brain injuries are serious, more serious than a hurt wrist, or burning your foot on a George Foreman Grill.

Jodie beats up a scarecrow on the way back.

At lunch, Mark is completely fine, so clearly, not a bad injury. They tell their grandparents about what happened. Their grandparents respond by laughing it off.

Jodie goes to find Sticks to confront him, since she’s convinced, he’s behind the scarecrow attack. She finds Sticks in the barn with the scarecrows. Sticks says they have to leave the farm. Not ominous at all.

That night, Jodie and Mark plan to scare Sticks to get revenge for him scaring them. Which he wasn’t the one scaring them, but anyways, they have to get their retaliation.

Mark dresses up as a scarecrow. The plan is for Jodie to knock on Sticks’ door and get him to come out to the cornfield where Mark will scare him.

On her way to scare Sticks, Jodie is attacked by a scarecrow. Sticks hears her. He comes to her rescue and beats up the scarecrow.

Sticks reveals that Stanley has basically used the discounted version of the Necronomicon to bring scarecrows to life. He further elaborates that Stanley scared her grandparents into doing whatever he wanted by using the scarecrows.

Basically, Stanley is the villain and should be fired immediately. The man is on a full villain arc. Either that, or he may be Randy Hickey.

Stanley overhears the conversation and freaks out. He goes to put the scarecrows to sleep. However, Mark shows up dressed as a scarecrow. This causes Stanley to run through the cornfield. According to the book, Stanley didn’t know the scarecrows were still alive, but this seems like a crazy reaction.

Stanley then accidentally brings more scarecrows to life. Turns out, Stanley is pretty illiterate. Which makes me question a lot of things in this book. I guess Stanley just got lucky bringing the scarecrows to life and he’s also an idiot, since it seems he’s pretty bad at everything.

That’s one conclusion you can draw, the other being, Stanley is just straight up evil, and he’s pretending to be dumb.

Jodie and Mark go to tell their grandparents about everything going on. The grandparents then blame the kids for upsetting Stanley. Personally, I would blame Stanley.

Stanley shows up, and makes a statement of all time, he can’t control the scarecrows. Great.

Everyone starts to ask Stanley to fix things. Too bad Stanley is borderline illiterate. At this point, I would take the book and figure things out myself. Which brings up a good question, why has nobody tried taking the book from Stanley?

The scarecrows start coming after them, which eventually causes everyone to go into the barn. This is when the scarecrows start copying Mark and everything Mark does. Huh?

Mark pulls his mask off, which causes the scarecrows to pull their own heads off. Too bad this doesn’t kill them, as the scarecrows are now even angrier.

The scarecrows start to grab everyone. Somehow everyone is able to escape. Then Sticks sets them on fire, since there are conveniently placed torches all over the barn. This is a fire hazard.

After burning the scarecrows in the flammable barn, that doesn’t catch fire, everyone is safe.

The next day, Stanley says he won’t read the scarecrow section of the book anymore. Instead, he starts to read from a different section. Why has nobody taken the book from him?

The book ends with the eight-foot-tall bear coming to life.

Review:

This is a pretty decent Goosebumps entry. I think the book is actually pretty good and is the best entry I’ve read in a while.

There are a few negatives. There are a few plot holes, inconsistency, especially with Stanley. I think the book gets lost in the sauce when Stanley is somehow a villain, but an idiot, but also just intelligent enough to figure out how to make evil scarecrows, and I think the book suffers from characters making dumb decisions. Also, outside of decisions, the main characters take forever to catch on to all of the weird happenings, or to figure out what’s going on. In the end they need everything spelled out for them, while the reader can see everything coming from a mile away.

Not the worst negatives for a Goosebumps book.

However, I think everything else in this book is really good. The scarecrows are cool villains, the main characters are likable, the plot is fast paced, and the book is a solid read. This Goosebumps entry is surprisingly well written. I can’t say many negative things about this entry.

My review for this Goosebumps entry 8/10. I would say this is a great story and is right up there with some of the other classics.

Twist ending:

Stanley still has his book and is still using it.

Memorable line:

“I can make the scarecrows move.” Stanley, please stop waking up the evil scarecrows.

Memorable moment, cliffhanger, etc:

When the scarecrows wake up and start coming for everyone. Pretty solid.

Bad parenting:

I think the grandparents should have not allowed the kids to come visit or they should have told the kids when they arrived. Instead, they pretend everything is fine.

Random references:

Walkman, Gameboy, Cable, MTV, and Cornflakes. I sure do love waking up to the war crime of Corn Flakes in the morning.

Tropes in book:

Sibling pair, character is 12, staying with relatives, weed jump scare, pranks, crazy cliffhangers, nobody believes a character’s crazy story, and a character has a ridiculous nickname (Sticks).

TV tie-in:

The Goosebumps tie-in episode is pretty good. It’s almost a carbon copy of the book, just significantly shortened into a 20-minute episode.

I won’t cover most of the episode here. Since the similarities are way more present than in previous adaptations. Instead, the biggest change occurs at the end. Instead of burning the scarecrows, they use a combine to shred the scarecrows. Also, instead of a bear coming to life, it’s the combine that comes to life when Stanley keeps reading from the book. I think this ending is a bit scarier and better than the books.

However, with the plot being so thin, some bad acting, and overall, just not as interesting as the book, I think the episode almost lives up to the Goosebumps book.

I’ll give this Goosebumps episode a 7/10 or maybe a 7.5/10.

Memorable episode line:

“The scarecrows walk at midnight.” You don’t have to keep telling me.

Famous cast:

Michael Copeman and Chris Lemche.

Come back soon for more Goosebumps fun and reviews.

To read the last Goosebumps review: https://goosebumpsblogger.com/goosebumps-19-deep-trouble/