Field of screams
The Children of the Corn franchise is a sight to behold. It is perhaps the most iconic horror franchise in which almost everyone in the world has only seen the first entry, a 1984 Stephen King short story adaptation which survives in the public consciousness on the back of some iconic villain performances, a solid hook, and an early Linda Hamilton appearance.
If you've only ever seen the first Children of the Corn, you've made the right life choices. Although there is some fun to be had frolicking through the corny early sequels, by the time you're halfway through the 10 extant pre-2020 entries, you have taken a steep dive off a cliff and despite the fact that the sharp rocks of the cliff face keep catching your skin, you will never reach the bottom.
In light of that, perhaps no franchise is a more fertile ground for a brand spanking new entry that's not quite a remake, not quite a prequel, not quite anything else either. Anyway, continuity has never meant much to the Children of the Corn franchise in the first place. Just like poor Hellraiser, for a long period it was caught in the Dimension grist mill of having sequels pumped out on a shoestring for the sole purpose of keeping the intellectual property rights intact, for what future grand design nobody ever quite figured out.
Anyway, what I'm saying is that, whatever writer-director Kurt Wimmer's long-delayed Children of the Corn is, there is absolutely nobody on Earth who would care if it takes its liberties and basically no competition for taking the title the best movie in the franchise. That's fun ground to find oneself on as a filmmaker, and unfortunately, that opportunity has been wasted for the umpteenth time.
This particular entry moves the action from Gatlin to Rylstone, Nebraska, a town that once thrived on its corn fields but has now come into disrepair and ruin after the farmers sold out to a company whose pesticides killed their crops. Surrounded by dying corn, the adults have turned on each other and their own children, and cruelty reigns in the streets in a manner that I'd call a rip-off of Halloween Ends if this movie hadn't been complete before that film even went into production.
Here to weed out the rot is child prophet Eden (Kate Moyer), who is slowly converting the children toward worshiping a mysterious entity known as He Who Walks. 17-year-old wannabe microbiologist Boleyn "Bo" Williams (Elena Kampouris), who also opposes the town turning its back on the corn crop, begins to look on with horror as Eden's methods take more and more violent turns.
There you have the basic ingredients of Children of the Corn, with a little "elevated horror" thematic material for flavor. Unfortunately, the screenplay does little with its own ideas other than present them over and over and over again without actually finding anything useful to say about them. It also assumes that anyone between the ages of 10 and 18 would not only have a deeply held opinion about corn subsidies, but such an extreme emotional reaction to said opinion about corn subsidies that it could propel reams and reams of pointless melodrama. However, at least the film occasionally remembers that it has themes. Everything else isn't so consistent as all that.
Taika Waititi has shared that one of his screenwriting tricks is to write a script, leave it in a drawer for a while, and then write it again from memory because the parts that stuck with him are going to be the good parts. I do think that approach was used here, but the final script was written by somebody who hadn't actually read the first script but instead heard about it in passing while half asleep on the bus.
Children of the Corn is an utter catastrophe in terms of structure and character development, laying way too many pieces on the board and in the process losing track of at least half of them at any given time. The script is chock full of moments where huge scenes happen offscreen that are only obliquely mentioned later or vice versa, like the moment halfway through the movie where Bo suddenly sprouts two female best friends who act like they've been hanging out with her the whole time. All of this leads to a third act that is a toxic melange of contrivance, stupidity, and cliché.
The pace is also wonky as all hell, with huge long stretches of waiting that imply something is about to happen that usually doesn't, and then when something does happen (and is sometimes even executed with pretty nifty special effects), Bo seems to teleport in out of nowhere in order to stare at it and underreact.
Fortunately, there are three things that are working in this film's favor. First, the movie Children of the Corn 666: Isaac's Return exists, proving that things could really be much, much worse. Second, the cinematography is actually pretty neat. It's not like it's exactly challenging to present cornfields with strict and satisfying symmetrical compositions, but many have failed to do so before Wimmer and cinematographer Andrew Rowlands.
The third element that works is by far the best, and also the most important for any movie titled Children of the Corn: Eden kind of rocks. In a cast where the acting ranges from mediocre to "I don't even know what you were going for," child actor Kate Moyer is a revelation. She imbues Eden with a sense of menace without copying John Franklin's creepy original turn as child priest Isaac.
While Isaac was, let's face it, kind of a drip, Eden conducts her evil with the petulant malice of a bored child, really striking deep at the bone of the insidious central conceit of the entire franchise. Her Eden is at turns ice cold, intimidating, wise beyond her years, youthfully innocent, and just kind of an asshole. This is the kind of layered, fascinating performance that makes a horror icon, and hopefully all those scripts that would have gone to Lulu Wilson five years ago find their way across her Playskool desk.
Brennan Klein is a millennial who knows way more about 80's slasher movies than he has any right to. He's a former host of the Attack of the Queerwolf podcast and a current senior movie/TV news writer at Screen Rant. You can find his other reviews on his blog Popcorn Culture. Follow him on Twitter or Letterboxd, if you feel like it.
If you've only ever seen the first Children of the Corn, you've made the right life choices. Although there is some fun to be had frolicking through the corny early sequels, by the time you're halfway through the 10 extant pre-2020 entries, you have taken a steep dive off a cliff and despite the fact that the sharp rocks of the cliff face keep catching your skin, you will never reach the bottom.
In light of that, perhaps no franchise is a more fertile ground for a brand spanking new entry that's not quite a remake, not quite a prequel, not quite anything else either. Anyway, continuity has never meant much to the Children of the Corn franchise in the first place. Just like poor Hellraiser, for a long period it was caught in the Dimension grist mill of having sequels pumped out on a shoestring for the sole purpose of keeping the intellectual property rights intact, for what future grand design nobody ever quite figured out.
Anyway, what I'm saying is that, whatever writer-director Kurt Wimmer's long-delayed Children of the Corn is, there is absolutely nobody on Earth who would care if it takes its liberties and basically no competition for taking the title the best movie in the franchise. That's fun ground to find oneself on as a filmmaker, and unfortunately, that opportunity has been wasted for the umpteenth time.
This particular entry moves the action from Gatlin to Rylstone, Nebraska, a town that once thrived on its corn fields but has now come into disrepair and ruin after the farmers sold out to a company whose pesticides killed their crops. Surrounded by dying corn, the adults have turned on each other and their own children, and cruelty reigns in the streets in a manner that I'd call a rip-off of Halloween Ends if this movie hadn't been complete before that film even went into production.
Here to weed out the rot is child prophet Eden (Kate Moyer), who is slowly converting the children toward worshiping a mysterious entity known as He Who Walks. 17-year-old wannabe microbiologist Boleyn "Bo" Williams (Elena Kampouris), who also opposes the town turning its back on the corn crop, begins to look on with horror as Eden's methods take more and more violent turns.
There you have the basic ingredients of Children of the Corn, with a little "elevated horror" thematic material for flavor. Unfortunately, the screenplay does little with its own ideas other than present them over and over and over again without actually finding anything useful to say about them. It also assumes that anyone between the ages of 10 and 18 would not only have a deeply held opinion about corn subsidies, but such an extreme emotional reaction to said opinion about corn subsidies that it could propel reams and reams of pointless melodrama. However, at least the film occasionally remembers that it has themes. Everything else isn't so consistent as all that.
Taika Waititi has shared that one of his screenwriting tricks is to write a script, leave it in a drawer for a while, and then write it again from memory because the parts that stuck with him are going to be the good parts. I do think that approach was used here, but the final script was written by somebody who hadn't actually read the first script but instead heard about it in passing while half asleep on the bus.
Children of the Corn is an utter catastrophe in terms of structure and character development, laying way too many pieces on the board and in the process losing track of at least half of them at any given time. The script is chock full of moments where huge scenes happen offscreen that are only obliquely mentioned later or vice versa, like the moment halfway through the movie where Bo suddenly sprouts two female best friends who act like they've been hanging out with her the whole time. All of this leads to a third act that is a toxic melange of contrivance, stupidity, and cliché.
The pace is also wonky as all hell, with huge long stretches of waiting that imply something is about to happen that usually doesn't, and then when something does happen (and is sometimes even executed with pretty nifty special effects), Bo seems to teleport in out of nowhere in order to stare at it and underreact.
Fortunately, there are three things that are working in this film's favor. First, the movie Children of the Corn 666: Isaac's Return exists, proving that things could really be much, much worse. Second, the cinematography is actually pretty neat. It's not like it's exactly challenging to present cornfields with strict and satisfying symmetrical compositions, but many have failed to do so before Wimmer and cinematographer Andrew Rowlands.
The third element that works is by far the best, and also the most important for any movie titled Children of the Corn: Eden kind of rocks. In a cast where the acting ranges from mediocre to "I don't even know what you were going for," child actor Kate Moyer is a revelation. She imbues Eden with a sense of menace without copying John Franklin's creepy original turn as child priest Isaac.
While Isaac was, let's face it, kind of a drip, Eden conducts her evil with the petulant malice of a bored child, really striking deep at the bone of the insidious central conceit of the entire franchise. Her Eden is at turns ice cold, intimidating, wise beyond her years, youthfully innocent, and just kind of an asshole. This is the kind of layered, fascinating performance that makes a horror icon, and hopefully all those scripts that would have gone to Lulu Wilson five years ago find their way across her Playskool desk.
Brennan Klein is a millennial who knows way more about 80's slasher movies than he has any right to. He's a former host of the Attack of the Queerwolf podcast and a current senior movie/TV news writer at Screen Rant. You can find his other reviews on his blog Popcorn Culture. Follow him on Twitter or Letterboxd, if you feel like it.
Categories: horror
