Strawstalker (2026) Review

Synopsis

An influencer couple, Henry and Haley, whose dream life in a gated Los Angeles suburb turns into a nightmare when a supernatural scarecrow begins stalking them. The creature, which appears in their backyard, feeds on lies, judges their performative lifestyle, and turns their filmed content into a live-streamed, deadly trap.

Good Points

• The influencer angle actually holds together better than I expected.
  
  
• It gets into the weird stuff pretty quickly.
  
  
• The mix of phone footage, cameras, livestream clips, and general recordings keeps things visually varied without turning it ever turning messy.
  
  
• The framing guy reacting to everything could’ve been awful, but it actually ends up adding a bit of structure and a couple of dry, funny moments.
  
  
• The main couple’s dynamic comes through in some of the small awkward moments quite well.
  
  
• It keeps moving at a steady pace, and nothing really drags for too long.
  
  
• For a low-budget found footage setup, it’s stitched together decent enough.

Bad Points

• The horror ideas don’t really grow much beyond the initial setup, it mostly just repeats the same idea in slightly different ways.
  
  
• The scarecrow concept never really develops.
  
  
• The scare attempts lean on familiar tricks.
  
  
• Not much payoff when the tension does build upto something.
  
  
• The middle section loses its energy a lot and just starts repeating the same character interactions, with the character arguments in particular start to feel repetitive.
  
  
• A couple of early editing choices reveal too much too soon and take away from the impact later on.
  
  
• By the end, you have the feeling that it hasn’t really escalated much from the start.

Final Thoughts on Strawstalker

There are a few ideas here that work, and I respect that it commits to its own annoying little world, but it doesn’t really build into anything – it’s watchable, occasionally slightly interesting, but pretty uneven overall.

Strawstalker on IMDB
Strawstalker Trailer
Watch and stream Strawstalker