Without truly thinking, I told my best friend the personal goal of mine to eventually watch every major horror movie franchise out there. He immediately fast-balled me with The Howling franchise, which I plowed through (aside from the unfindable Howling VII: New Moon Rising – another friend recently sent me the VHS for my birthday). I followed it up with the short and sweet Re-Animator trilogy and decided my next watch-a-thon needed to be a big one. My best friend did some digging and ultimately decided I should watch a huge franchise where I hadn’t seen many of the films from it. I decided to choose between Puppet Master, Witchcraft, and his suggestion of Children of the Corn. I chose poorly.
The first movie is pretty damned serviceable. Being that this was one of the only films in the franchise that I’d seen previously, at least I knew what to expect. It was kind of a plethora of fairly solid things all coming together at the same time. A decent Stephen King short story, Fritz Kiersch (Winners Take All, Gor) making a rare movie, Jonathan Elias (Vamp, Leprechaun 2) kicking off a career of composing by see-sawing in and out of the horror field with a creepy score, Linda Hamilton and Peter Horton starting their film careers that would go in different directions. There was blood, cult-y shit, creepy kids in weird hats, and still to this day, probably the most realistic dummy car-crash scene I can think of. Surely the amount of mileage this franchise got out of a 50-page story can give me something in the next nine movies. I’ll say it again. I chose poorly.
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The second movie (Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice) does a few things right but ultimately takes a huge step down in pretty much all the ways the first one succeeded: A worse story, worse actors, worse music. The few redeeming factors all laid within the practical effects and were washed away with the many weird Wizard of Oz references, including a woman screaming, “What a world!” and a house falling on her, with her shoes popping out. Let me not forget the title, The Final Sacrifice. When horror franchises use “final” in their titles, it drives me nuts. It’s like the closer to the beginning the franchise uses it, the crazier I become. Looking at you, Friday the 13th!
Part three (Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest) is even worse than part two (see a theme here?). After the events in the first film, creepy kids from Gatlin, Nebraska get strewn about to various foster families in the U.S. This particular story takes place in Chicago and is filled with all sorts of the stereotypical problematic things that white directors threw in ’90s-2000’s urban movies (See: Leprechaun 5: In the Hood). It did offer a few great practical effects though, including a man being turned into a scarecrow by having his neck, head and limbs stretched. Parts four (Children of the Corn: The Gathering) and five (Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror) were late ’90s straight-to-video messes with early major roles for both Eva Mendes and Naomi Watts. Nothing much to see here.
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I was looking forward to part six (Children of the Corn 666: Isaac’s Return) for two reasons. It was the only other movie in the franchise I’d seen (on TV sometime in the early 2000’s) and finally, we were getting an original member of the cast back, with John Franklin making his return. Spoiler alert: a 40-year-old Isaac and Stacy Keach (who I LOVE in other films) weren’t enough to move the needle. Part seven (Children of the Corn: Revelation) flew completely off the handle and somehow, even demon-possessed ghost grandmas weren’t even enough to keep me interested.
The eighth film in the franchise (also titled Children of the Corn) was a reboot of the first film, took everything you liked about the two main characters, and reversed it. These characters were detestable, and I was done with them both, five minutes into the movie. It was a long hour and a half. I will give it some props for being the best effects I’d seen in the last 4 films, and they really tried to match that dummy car crash from the first film. Part nine (Children of the Corn: Genesis) was probably my second favorite film of the series. That doesn’t mean it was good, but for whatever reason I enjoyed watching a semi-conscious Billy Drago be a creep and was charmed by TV actors Kelen Coleman (The Office, Newsroom) and Tim Rock (House). Lastly, part 10 (Children of the Corn: Runaway) brought us back to Gatlin, as an OG pregnant corn kid has a baby, grows up, and brings her butthead teenager back to Oklahoma, only to be harassed by the local yokels and followed by the evil presence known throughout the series as “He Who Walks Behind the Rows.” Meh.
Phew. That was a lot, I know. I did it so that you don’t have to. I made the corn-husk relic, prayed to the corn lord, and powered through these movies so that you can tell your children’s children’s children that you read an article from a guy that watched all 10 films that somehow only amounted to 1.5 decent films. Somehow in the span of 10 movies, I was able to get basically no cohesion, hardly any of the same characters, and no satisfaction. It’s so strange that this Stephen King franchise was the one to spawn so many sequels. I wasted my time to save yours. But be warned, reader. I’ll be back when Kurt Wimmer (Total Recall 2012, Point Break 2015), who just LOVES to direct remakes, brings Children of the Corn back once again in 2021. For you see, He Who Walks Behind the Rows wants you, too. He wants you, too.
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Finally! Someone who has reviewed the whole franchise. Though I can see why hardly anybody talks about these films. And I was just about to dive into the whole franchise and give them a watch. Thanks for the review and saving my time 😂