Two teens Chad and his girlfriend Marcy head to a cornfield to scare their friends Tyler and Nikki for posting pictures of them online. They slip into an old barn and, in a tense moment, stumble through a rotted floor. [Marcy] injures her thigh as Chad scrambles to help her. Mysteriously, Marcy’s blood soaks through the floorboards and something unseen seems to move beneath them, heightening the sense of danger. A monstrous hand clamps down on Chad’s head from behind, ending his life in a savage, sudden moment while a terrified [Marcy] screams in disbelief.
Later, high school teacher Aaron Harris leads six students—Calvin, Daevon, Nikki, Tyler, Maria and Beth—to an abandoned cornfield to recover the scarecrow for the 100th Scarecrow festival. The town’s legend looms large: a tale born of the deaths of thirty people who once lived there. As they arrive, Tyler begins a local chant to awaken the legend:
> It never sleeps, it never dies, it can't be stopped, hear their cries. The Scarecrow lives to kill us all. Keep it buried in the fall...
The mood shifts as Aaron spots his ex-girlfriend Kristen Miller nearby and steps out to talk to her. Kristen has brought in Eddie, Aaron’s former best friend who once dated Kristen, to help with the scarecrow, though Eddie’s arrival is complicated by a truck that won’t restart. Meanwhile, the students head toward the scarecrow, and [Calvin] is tied to it by the now-missing [Nikki] and Tyler. Kristen, Eddie, and Daevon begin to untie [Calvin] while Beth is snatched by an unseen force and dragged into the cornfield. Aaron urges the others to stay put as he, Kristen and Eddie push to save Beth.
Calvin bolts in panic as Kristen finds Beth, who is still alive but then is dragged away again. The survivors retreat to a deserted farmhouse beside the field and barricade themselves inside as something pounds at the door. In a brutal moment, [Nikki]’s body is hurled through a window with her throat slashed, then dragged away again.
With fear mounting, Daevon finds a rifle and hands it to Eddie. Maria explains that Nikki took the bus keys, leaving Eddie’s truck as the only chance of escape. Aaron decides to attempt a break for the truck, but Calvin swoops in to seize the keys and escapes, only to be slain by the scarecrow. Kristen fights back with a Molotov cocktail, setting the truck ablaze and creating a diversion that allows the group to flee back toward the barn. The scarecrow blocks their path, forcing them to fall through the barn floor where they discover Marcy’s remains and a corpse of Tyler hanging from the roof.
The survivors craft a plan to escape and climb a rope one by one as distant police sirens grow louder. A lone cop is killed by the scarecrow as the group retrieves the keys to attempt an exit, but Daevon loses his life in the ensuing chaos. Kristen, Aaron, Eddie, Beth and Maria manage to escape and try to return to town, but the scarecrow attacks again, crippling their vehicle and driving it into a tree. Eddie is mortally wounded and sacrifices himself by igniting leaking fuel to buy the others time to flee. The group splits up once more, with Maria running to rejoin Kristen and Aaron while Beth heads toward a nearby farm.
Inside the farmhouse later, the trio confronts a wary farmer who confirms that the scarecrow was buried to avenge a vendetta against Kristen’s family. Dogs begin to bark, and the farmer warns that being near Kristen is dangerous—he is soon killed as the scarecrow closes in. Beth, obsessed with feeding the creature, again tries to lure it, but Aaron and Maria resist. Beth bolts away, and the remaining trio uses a tractor in a desperate bid to escape. Kristen heads back to help Beth when she finds Beth neck-deep in danger; Beth holds a blade to Kristen’s throat. The scarecrow nears as Aaron latches a rope around it and drags it into machinery, where it is shredded. The machine tears at Beth, and she dies as the scarecrow’s threat intensifies.
The creature returns, focusing on Maria, slashing her leg and forcing the trio to run again into the woods. Kristen compels Aaron and Maria to split up, while she makes her final stand on the farm. She slices her own hand to bleed on cattle and triggers a distraction that causes cows to cry out in pain, buying them precious time. When the trio finally reunites, the scarecrow drives a spear through Maria, killing her and wounding Aaron in the process.
As dawn breaks, Aaron and Kristen head toward a boat graveyard in search of a lifeboat, hoping the scarecrow will not follow. A workman’s mutilated face appears, and the scarecrow attacks again. Aaron battles the creature and shoves it into the water, but the scarecrow pierces his chest, killing him. Kristen armors herself with an axe and lures the monster to the ship’s bowels, where she sets the scarecrow ablaze in the furnace and detonates the boat, ensuring the creature’s final destruction.
