Not a Prequel, and hopefully this clears some of that up.

People fail to realize that this is not a prequel; it is a film written by Todd Farmer who adapted this screenplay to be closer to his original story for the original film. This was his baby, for better or worse, before Mark Wheaton's completely re-written screenplay became the "first" film.

In a way, this film is like a reverse remake where the first film would have been the "reinterpretation" of this film. John Rollins is the only shared character but the two characters similarities end there. Think of Jack Nicholson's Joker versus Heath Ledger's or Tommy Lee Jones' Two-Face versus Aaron Eckhart's in that they are the came character yet in each film they have completely different overall story arcs. I'm still uncertain why this is a concept many fail to grasp when attempting to mesh the two films.

This film was never supposed to be a prequel but Sony apparently botched this with their press release.

Per Todd Himself:
http://www.fearnet.com/news/b14310_todd_farmer_writes_us_bloody_valentine.html

"...FEARNet: And what about Messengers 2: The Scarecrow?

Farmer: That one is a funny story. For the first one, I was the first writer on that. It changed quite often, as Hollywood movies tend to do. My original script was not what ended up coming out but the studio read my original script and said, "Hey, let's make a movie out of this." So I wrote one script, but made two movies out of it.

FEARNet: So Messengers 2 is your Messengers 1?

Farmer: Yes – but my Messengers 1 is also my Messengers 1..."