Husk (2011) - 2.5/4

Remember that magnificent story by Jorge Luis Borges where a spy is summoned to a mansion; there he finds himself trapped in an infinite labyrinth inside a novel and he shoots a detective to prove it? Well Husk has nothing to do with that. Husk is about killer scarecrows.

Husk is actually a sort of magic realist fantasy as much as it is a horror. Yes, it's about killer scarecrows. But it's also about a complex and inscrutable mechanism that creates, controls, and maintains the scarecrows, as well as the various instruments of the mechanism. It functions as follows: whenever humans enter the cornfield, they are attacked and crucified by a scarecrow; the victim is then entranced and summoned to a room in the farmhouse containing nothing but an Olde Tyme sewing machine; the zombie-like victim then stitches together a scarecrow mask and wears it; with that the victim is forever a scarecrow controlled by the mechanism, ready to assault more humans.

There are other rules governing the mechanism. For one, the scarecrows can't leave the cornfield once they're in it. They can't even return to the farmhouse. Also, only one scarecrow can be mobile at any given time. The mechanism can't control two scarecrows at once. And perhaps the most peculiar of all the mechanism's activities is the visions it grants to one of the victims, revealing the past.

The film tries to explain these rules by means of, as is so often the case, a past tragedy (fratricide); but the explanation is deeply inadequate for explaining the whole mechanism. Tragedy is not trauma; there's no reason a personal trauma like murder should become a cosmic trauma, unless of course the cosmos is within a dream. But even granting that Freudian premise, still only a few pieces of the mechanism are explained. Really, the rules are arbitrary. Whether that's a good or bad thing comes down to the individual viewer. Some will no doubt find it frustrating. I personally enjoyed the lack of explanation. It was much more interesting to me to see the characters struggling, like scientists, to figure out how this anomalous portion of the universe works rather than asking the more theological question of, "Why?".

The plot of Husk is that a group of 20-somethings are driving to wherever a group of 20-somethings would drive to when they crash right outside the farmhouse of the scarecrows. Naturally they gravitate toward the farmhouse seeking help. One-by-one the scarecrows whittle them down and convert them into scarecrows while the survivors, especially the young man gifted with visions of the farmhouse's past (Devon Graye), try to figure out the mechanism and fight back.

A difficulty many viewers will have with Husk is the plot holes, and just about all of these plot holes come from the arbitrary rules of the mechanism. For instance, if the sewing is so integral to the creation of the scarecrows, why not simply destroy the sewing machine? Or, for that matter, burn down the house? Several options appear open to them to interfere with the mechanism one way or another, either to stop the mechanism or at least render the scarecrows ineffectual. But, as we must always say of plot holes, "If they did that, there'd be no movie."

For anyone who wishes to dig further, there arealso some Freudian implications to enjoy. Following trauma, the sufferer represses the memory and the repressed trauma bubbles up as compulsive repetition. The Freudian ideal is to face the trauma and no longer repress it. In Husk, the mechanism is about as clear a representation of repetition-compulsion as one could hope for. The trauma is the fratricide that is too much for, well, the cosmos? the ghost of the murderer? or for the dreamer of this nightmare, namely the audience? Whomever it may be, it is through the character of the visionary that we begin to face the trauma. This parallel with psychoanalytic theory could well have been intentional, as so many young filmmakers are acquainted with film theory. If not, it's still a fruitful area of inquiry.

The main pleasure of Husk, however, is to just enjoy the killer scarecrows and the young adults kicking scarecrow ass. Killer scarecrows just aren't that common a movie monster. In fact, the best killer scarecrow before this film is in an episode of Friday the 13th: The Series. So as far as killer scarecrow action goes, Husk is an excellent update for the 2010s.