Messengers 2: The Scarecrow

Messengers 2: The Scarecrow (2009) is a horror prequel you can watch online on iFILM. North Dakota farmer John Rollins is hemorrhaging — bad harvest, a bank closing in on his mortgage, a water pump that won't run, and a marriage drifting toward the neighbor next door. Then his neighbor Jude talks him into planting a scarecrow he found in the barn.

The results come fast. Crows dead in the field. Pump back on. The banker threatening foreclosure dies in a car accident. Things are improving. John knows why. He keeps the scarecrow standing.

Norman Reedus — two years before The Walking Dead made him famous — carries the film as a man watching himself make every wrong choice in slow motion. Director Martin Barnewitz grounds the supernatural in economic desperation, which makes the horror more unsettling than the creature-feature setup suggests. Stream it on iFILM.