The Doctor’s Diagnosis: D+
Despite the simple title, it’s important to note that this is the eleventh Children of the Corn movie. I’ll repeat that because I think it warrants repeating: This is the fucking eleventh Children of the Corn movie. When I mentioned this movie to people, I mainly got shocked looks and a response of “they made more than two of those?” Oh yeah, they made more than two, but most people checked out at that point because Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice was the last one released in theaters way back in 1992. Since then, the series has been relegated to the status of straight-to-video/DVD/television and only obsessive idiots, such as myself, have bothered watching the entire series.
Imagine, then, my shock when I saw this thing included in my local theater listings. I initially thought that it must have been a mistake. It wasn’t. The eleventh entry in the Corn saga was somehow released in 500+ theaters, even though there was absolutely zero marketing for it (and that complete lack of effort paid off with a truly pathetic box office of $325,583 as of this writing). Also worth noting, this movie was made in 2020 and even received a theatrical release in October, 2020…in Sarasota, Florida. So if you live in Sarasota and this movie seems awfully familiar to you, that’s possibly because you saw it three frigging years ago. For the rest of the country, the long wait is finally over.
Filmed in Australia (because when I think of the American mid-west, I think Australia), the latest Children of the Corn is a prequel to the events in Stephen King’s original short story and the first film from 1984. Set in the farming town of Rylstone, even though the town in the original is called Gatlin, the local corn crop has dried up because the townspeople made some unwise deals with a corporation that introduced new chemicals into the soil. With their corn-based economy dying with the crops, the town’s adults want to give up and sell off the land. Seeing that the adults have essentially sold away their future and destroyed their land, the local kids turn to a nature spirit (or something) called He Who Walks Behind the Rows and start slaughtering the adults.
The film aims, I suppose, to address one of the largest plot holes in the original story: How the hell did a bunch of kids violently take over an entire town without anyone noticing? As it turns out, there is a very good reason why King didn’t address this question in the story: There is no good answer to that question. Actually showing the kids take over the town is significantly more laughable than just having to accept this premise as a starting point because now you must constantly wonder “why doesn’t anyone do anything to stop this?” They are frigging children led by a twelve-year-old girl, for crying out loud. In the original movie, this is relegated to a sudden massacre in the opening scene when the kids had the element of surprise and quickly killed the adults rather than holding them prisoner so that they can lecture them. Dragging this out beyond a surprise attack raises many questions. How did children tie a 250-pound man to a ladder with a noose around his neck? How do children keep rounding up all the adults in town? Why the fuck doesn’t anyone just knock them out? Why doesn’t anyone, including the police, have a gun? To paraphrase Seinfeld: They’re children! You don’t need karate, you can just wring their neck!
This being 2023, the film is obligated to have a heavy-handed political message. I can’t believe we’re at the point of even being lectured by Children of the Corn movies, but that’s where we are as a society. The film is, of course, about global warming with the children revolting because the prior generations ruined the earth and squandered their future for greed. Subtle, it is not. However, it’s interesting that the lead villain (played by Kate Moyer) bears a resemblance to Greta Thunberg and the murderous cult that she leads isn’t exactly a bastion of civility. I wonder, therefore, where exactly the film falls politically since it has an unflattering portrayal of both sides. The adults should be more open to discussing and addressing the potential impact that their actions will have on future generations. The kids shouldn’t kill people and burn down buildings and then pretend that they are the peaceful and noble ones. Perhaps my interpretation is wrong, but this is one of the more balanced political messages I’ve seen in a film. Perhaps, just perhaps, Children of the Corn is the film that our society needs and will finally bring us together to admit our own faults and have a rational conversation about the problems that we face as a society. Or it’s just another shitty horror sequel. Time will tell.
As a horror film, it just isn’t scary and is fairly tame with the exception of one oddly brutal kill. We spend much of the time learning about the politics of crop farming before the kids fully turn homicidal, which itself isn’t scary because it’s so absurd to watch. While other films in the series wisely kept He Who Walks Behind the Rows in the shadows for the most part, this entry makes the mistake of putting him front and center and the result is unintentionally hilarious. Other Corn movies have portrayed him as more of a vague demon or spirit, but here he is a giant CGI monster made of corn stalks. The design is so literal that it seems like something that an effects guy would have designed as a joke, but was then horrified to discover that the producers actually went with that design.
The saving grace is the performances and I honestly must give these actors a lot of credit. They damn sure are trying. Elena Kampouris is excellent as the protagonist and treats the proceedings with an air of seriousness that isn’t warranted by the material, but I damn sure appreciated the effort. The biggest standout, though, is Kate Moyer as the leader of the killer kids. We really need an Oscar for Best Performance in a Shitty Movie because this kid deserves some recognition. She is damn creepy and brings an unusual amount of gravitas to a villain role for someone so young, even if the script doesn’t do her any favors with establishing menace. She is easily the most memorable villain in this series since the original and Moyer deserves bigger and better things in her future.
This is not the worst entry in the series, that honor still belongs to the incomprehensible Children of the Corn: Genesis, but it’s still pretty damn lame. I have a bit of a soft spot for the earlier entries in the series (the second and third entries, while not good movies, hold a certain nostalgia for me), but this was a thin concept to begin with and it was stretched beyond the breaking point decades ago. Beyond a couple of strong performances, there is no reason for anyone, beyond the extremely bored and the obsessive completionist, to take this eleventh (frigging eleventh) trip into the cornfield.
Image By: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_the_Corn_(2020_film)#/media/File:Children_of_the_Corn_(2020_film).jpg
