Children of the Corn

Of all the Stephen King books and films, I find the movie Children of the Corn to be about the most interesting. As a fan of horror movies, I think films with children as villains seem to work for me. Poltergeist and Insidious are two quality horror movies that involve children and families. Village of the Damned was another and this spawned others. Children of the Corn is one of the most interesting of these films because of it's originality, atmosphere and it involved many kids, not just one. This series had some sequels with the first one coming out in 1984 with mixed reviews. The most recent in the series was a remake on the Syfy Channel in 2009 eight years after the last one.

This remake uses most of all all the same ideas of the original including corn fields in Nebraska and kids with religious views who have killed their parents and looking to strike again. This time the victims are an argumentative couple who were on their way to a honeymoon trip in California.

As a creepy kid film, it is very important that there are good performances from the child actors. Here, I was disappointed in the child characters. Other than the Isaac character (Preston Bailey) just about every kid plays their part like extras. At the same time, these characters are not creepy and don't work well as villains.

Even though you could pick at it a little and get maybe something, there isn't much of a plot here. I do like the leads of David Anders and Kandyse McClure but they aren't given much to do and they really mope around a lot. There are some interesting sets here but the kill scenes are not particularly good. There are some beneath the surface ideas that do come into play here. and these include the idea of race, spiritual aspects of the corn and religious overtones throughout.

Of course you can't take any of this story too seriously, but obviously there is no way something like this could happen in our country with our government. A town full of killer kids and young pregnant girls would be responded to quickly by the police and military and would be a CNN headliner for weeks. A minor flaw maybe but still hard to overlook.

I found Children of the Corn to be disappointing and a movie with an hour and half plot that ran too long at two hours. This is a tv film that feels like a tornado stringing things and ideas around with no purpose and really just wasting our time.

1.5/5