Children of the Corn (2020)

JUNE 20, 2023

GENRE: CULT, KILLER KID
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

Stephen King’s short story “Children of the Corn” is only 30 pages long, and yet it has somehow inspired a lengthy short film (retitled Disciples of the Crow, and worth seeing!) and three (3) feature films, not to mention all of the sequels. The 2009 version was more faithful to King’s story than the 1984 one, but both suffered from being clearly drawn out from a 30 page story (Disciples had no such issue, as it ran the same length in minutes). The two best films in the series were both sequels; 1994’s Urban Harvest and 2018’s Runaway, which was curiously a sequel to the remake despite being part of the Dimension brand (the 2009 film was a Syfy one), as if being free from King’s not particularly expansive story allowed the filmmakers to come up with something that worked as a genuine feature film. But in Children of the Corn (2020)’s case, writer/director Kurt Wimmer tossed out King’s story entirely in favor of something that… doesn’t work as a feature film. Weird tack.

To be fair, the one line synopsis is close enough: the kids in a Nebraska town kill all of the adults and worship a corn-dwelling monster called He Who Walks (the “Behind the Rows” part is dropped). But this all happens within the present day timeline of the film, as opposed to something that happened years ago like in the story/previous movies. The unsettling idea of stumbling into a town that’s been adult-free for the better part of a decade is a big part of what gives the story its power, so to toss it in favor of having it happen within the story (and without any outsiders) is an odd choice. And maybe it’d work as a prequel of sorts, fleshing out the briefly seen events from the other movies as a film of its own, but with the different town name (Rylstone) no Malachi or Isaac, etc. it doesn’t fit into anything, so it stands alone as a total reimagining.

Which would be fine if it was, you know, any good. But even though it’s reworked from the ground up it feels more padded than ever. The film opens with an older teen walking into an orphanage and killing all of the adults who work there, which prompts the sheriff and some local “good ol boys” to pump some lethal gas into the place to take him out, shrugging off that it’ll also kill the children who were staying there (and not being targeted by the older boy). The lone survivor, a 12ish girl named Eden, then rallies the other kids in town to wipe out their parents, but they attribute their anger to the parents ruining the corn with some experimental growth hormone, killing the town’s economy and now planning to take a buyout from the government, which (per the kids) “steals their future.” An interesting idea, sure, but… why the orphanage massacre, then? It’s basically forgotten after the first few minutes, and robs the film of a dozen potential cult members. Then again the whole “angry at the parents for selling the town out” angle barely factors into anything either after a while, so it’s just part of the random plotting that Wimmer keeps relying on throughout the film’s seemingly endless 93 minutes.

My favorite example happens around a half hour in or so, when our hero Bo (Elena Kampouris) and her brother decide to have a mock trial at the town hall to plead their parents not to agree to the government buyout. To do this they tie their father’s hands together while he sleeps, then wake him up and tell him he needs to come to the town hall (added hilarity: they keep saying the trial is at 10pm, but don’t even wake him up until 10:30, so they will be an hour late for their own idea. Stupid lazy kids), adding not to wake up their mother, who they’ve already bound as well, But then they cut outside and the mom is with them anyway, with both of them just sort of wearily going along with this kidnapping the way a parent might humor their kid by laughing along with them at Paw Patrol or something. Then they see signs of violence, and do they cut their parents loose? Nope, they just act like Eden’s being a little weird, despite crashed cars and the like. It’s like ten straight minutes of the film where no one acts like a human being, all so the plot can work. That it’s never clear what Bo was going to do if Eden hadn’t already started killing everyone in town just adds to the “Why are we watching this?” feeling.

It doesn’t help that Kampouris is noticeably older than the character she’s playing. We’re all used to seeing much older actors portraying teens (Kampouris was 22, 23 at the time of the production, playing 17), but it has a much different effect in this particular story, where the kids are the evildoers. Bo and her two friends (same age, if not older) aren’t on board with Eden’s wrath of terror, but it should come off as same-aged kids (KIDS) realizing right from wrong. Instead it’s like a trio of camp counselors catching their charges in the act of wrongdoing – of course they’re not going to go along with a bunch of 10 year olds! They look like grad students! Not that I hold Carpenter’s Village of the Damned up in high regard (though it isn’t nearly as bad as its rep), but David’s hesitance to join the others always played out perfectly, because you could feel his struggle between knowing what was right and wanting to fit in with his peers. There’s no such suspense here; Bo and her pals just kind of fret for nearly an hour until they finally do something. At least if they were the same age as Eden and the others, it could read as “well she’s a little kid too, she doesn’t know what to do!” but it’s impossible to believe such a thing when the character seems old enough to go ahead and have a kid of her own.

And as an Isaac substitute, Eden isn’t particularly scary – the most intense she gets in the entire thing is early on, right after the orphanage sequence, when she freaks out over being unable to fit a piece into a jigsaw puzzle. She also dons a “Red Queen” persona for a bit, which amused me because it reminded me of the Resident Evil movies, and it was all the interference on Ultraviolet (also starring Milla Jovovich) that led Wimmer to retire from directing for a while. Why he came back for this is beyond me, but I couldn’t help but wonder if the Red Queen thing crossed his mind as well. Either way, it’s dropped after about thirty minutes for some reason; I was kind of into the idea of Eden having two personalities (a more innocent one and the more sinister “Red Queen”) but it, like most of the movie’s odd plot points, ultimately doesn’t mean much.

I also thought of Deadly Friend, though not because of any particular wacky death scene (it’s actually a pretty tame movie; most of the carnage occurs off screen and when we do see something it’s usually pretty phony looking anyway). At the end, a character seemingly wins the day and escapes, only for a burnt/decaying Eden to reappear for one final scare, and it’s just as absolutely WTF as the ending of Craven’s misfire, where the robot tears itself out of Kristy Swanson’s body. Eden looks like some kind of messed up Good Guy doll in the scene, and it makes zero sense whatsoever, but honestly it’s probably the best part of the movie, since it’s at least kind of memorable. It’ll take years before I forget that shot, whereas I’m already hazy on the film’s interminable middle section. And as for the villainous corn god, he basically looks like an Asylum Mockbuster version of Groot, which is kind of amusing at least but they (as is often the case in this series) only show him in brief glimpses, so he fails to become much of a genuine threat. Wimmer ought to have gone full Sharknado and embraced how silly it looked so we could at least generate some “get drunk and laugh” entertainment out of his scenes, but they’re so brief they only remind us of how plodding the rest of the movie was (and also wonder how it is the adults managed to ruin all these crops with this genetically engineered stuff without encountering a 15 foot tall beast that is angry about it).

It's a shame too, because there are glimpses of an interesting movie here and there. The shots of the dying town, the idea that the heroine actually agrees with the villains but just doesn’t want to go about fixing the issue the same way (her ideas are much less murdery), the occasional moment where the kids are just being kids among all the atrocities – this all works! And I applauded the use of a particular Twilight Zone clip, even if it was kind of on the nose it was still funny. But Wimmer’s screenplay continually settles for introducing interesting ideas only to drop them just as quickly and revert back to the protagonist being kind of dumb, or at least not proactive enough (though the former takes precedence; at one point she tasks Eden – who is currently painting the crops with fresh blood from *something* – to meet the reporter coming to town that has promised to help, instead of asking one of her friends who were part of the plan to get her there in the first place). I kept thinking that it felt like the first 20 pages of the script were tossed out, which would explain/help some of the film’s issues, but not the fact that its hero stands around doing nothing for most of the runtime and the villain rarely delivers any real menace. There are certainly worse entries in this series, but they tend to suck from the ground up – it’s far more frustrating to see one that seemingly has some ideas (and Wimmer has done some good work in the past!) but never do anything with them. I suppose it’s possible he got micromanaged or even replaced by producers (reshoots would certainly explain all of the dropped ideas; did anyone who saw it in 2020 notice anything different when it was finally released for the rest of us this year?), but I can’t imagine there was much second guessing on Children of the Corn 12, during a pandemic no less.

There are two deleted scenes of zero interest and a trailer reel for RLJE releases, including Mandy which I found amusing – it’s been like four years since that came to disc and they’re still pushing it! But who can blame them, it’s a great movie and they probably want to remind folks that they put out good stuff, too. I bought the disc at Target because I was just tickled that they had it at all in their increasingly tiny movie section (which is otherwise just pretty much blockbusters and TV show boxed sets) and I liked seeing in my cart next to bananas and cat food, but if you’re somehow still curious enough to watch the damn thing, it’ll be on Shudder next week. I doubt it’ll help increase subscriptions. Speaking of buying it, even though it was already on clearance, it still cost more than this site has generated in revenue all year, so it's very possible that this is the last time I ever write a Children of the Corn review, which makes me kind of sad in a weird way. Whenever I make self-deprecating jokes about what I do, I frequently make the Corn franchise the target (i.e. "I haven't seen Raging Bull, but I HAVE seen all twelve Children of the Corn movies, so it evens out."), so it's like the end of an era, possibly!

What say you?

Tweet