For as long as Children of the Corn has been a horror franchise, there has been a fundamental misunderstanding about its existence. Directors cannot fathom why the story is scary, and each subsequent sequel has only gotten worse. This latest Children of the Corn, originally meant to be released in 2020 and coming out now, might be the worst offender. Unintentionally silly, it literalizes too much from the original Stephen King short story, and it includes some flourishes that are simply baffling.
You may recognize the name Kurt Wimmer, since he wrote and directed Equilibrium, a film starring Christian Bale that combines dystopia and stylish gunplay. He also wrote and directed this film, except here there is a dearth of style. His point-of-view character is Bo (Elena Kampouris), a young woman who dislikes how her flyover Midwest town is dying. Still, she is not so young that she buys into the death cult led by Eden (Kate Moyer), who serves a mysterious figure called He Who Walks Behind the Rows. It is surprisingly easy for Eden to lead an uprising, a mass murder event for all the adults in the town.
Sort of like the recent release Marlowe, which was set in Los Angeles but filmed in Europe, Children of the Corn suffers from not being made in the United States. Wimmer shot his film in Australia, and few of the actors give any sense of authenticity. Many early scenes involve debate about whether the town should abandon their cornfields altogether, which might be a palpable metaphor, except no dialogue creates a convincing stand-in for actual concerns. Instead, the kids increasingly focus on their death cult only because they must, leading to admittedly gory scenes where adults are murdered in increasingly creative ways.
The quality of the gore is not enough to justify a runtime, a classic horror film cliché and mistake. There is a scene where Eden stages a mass murder event, one where almost all the people in the town are buried alive. It should be horrific, and yet it almost perfunctory, as if Wimmer thought about his outcome before he considered how the characters would arrive there. Still, the most egregious thing about Children of the Corn, the thing that makes it borderline unwatchable, is how it literalizes its monster. He Who Walks Behind the Rows is frightening because he is unknowable, a kind of Lovecraftian creature who can inspire children to kill. In this film, we see him multiple times, and instead of Cthulhu, he looks a little bit like Swamp Thing but with more corn husks. The special effects are cheesy, and they build to a final flourish that raises more questions than answers.
Who is this remake for? It is certainly not for fans of the horror genre, since there have been way too many Children of the Corn films with diminishing marginal returns. Maybe it’s for the parents of the young actors who appear in this film, who are no doubt proud they can watch their children behave really, really badly. In all likelihood, this film is for unsuspecting audiences who are unaware this is the 11th film with Children of the Corn in the title, and the second remake of the original. The original Stephen King short story is an exercise in style, one that uses misdirection to unearth a disturbing premise. In this film, it is unclear that Wimmer realizes misdirection could be something in his toolkit.
Photo courtesy of RLJ Entertainment
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