Children of the Corn series has always been a series I have enjoyed watching. At least the first six films I enjoyed watching anyway, as there have now been eleven films in the franchise, most the later ones I have yet to see, so I am unsure as to their quality. The latest film in the series is 2020's Children of the Corn, the third film with that title, and the third direct adaptation of Stephen King's 1977 short horror story of the same name (this one directed and written by Kurt Wimmer - Ultraviolet, Equilibrium). I really wanted to enjoy this, and it was by no means a bad film, but this was let down by not going in the direction I was hoping for, and for keeping things a little too sedate and tame.
Boleyn (Elena Kampouris - Before I Fall) is an eighteen year old teenager who lives in a remote farming community which had relied heavily on growing corn. The decision was made in the past to start using pesticides and fertilisers to help the crop grow, but that proved to be disastrous, and now the fields are full of diseased and dying rows of corn. Her father puts forward a motion to get rid of the crops entirely, in exchange for government subsidies. Boleyn is determined to stop this by calling in a reporter who will expose to the world the shady corporation who sold the townsfolk the ruinous chemicals. Eden (Kate Moyer - Our House) is a young girl who has come to a different and far more deadly solution. Holding all adults responsible for the situation the town has gotten into, she comes to believe that they must all be killed. She worships an apparent supernatural presence in the cornfields, ominously referred to as 'he who walks behind the rows', and has recruited the rest of the town's children to her cause. Now Boleyn has to find a way to help the surviving adults, as well as find a way to stop Eden and her young cult.
For the longest time I thought that this was going to be a complete prequel, and it did look that way for the first two acts. The original film (and short story) had two adults stumbling across an adult-less town in which the children had already taken over. For the first two acts, and first hour of this latest film, it charts the rise of the children, and just how they were able to take over. This part was pretty cool, it was interesting to see a pre-supernatural horror setting, knowing what was to come. Sadly, this momentum is all dissolved over the final thirty minutes, in which all the set-up is torn down for an underwhelming story that is soon revealed to be its own thing entirely and not acting as a prologue for a different movie. I think it would have been so cool for the whole movie to be setting up the situation of the very first Children of the Corn story but it was not to be.
The characters were also mostly wasted, an ok protagonist and antagonist, but nearly everyone else was very underdeveloped, with a muddled script and story that never really seemed to know exactly what is was trying to achieve.
One thing I always loved about the original films was that you never actually ever saw the supposed supernatural antagonist, instead, it was always inferred, I recall in some films it was represented as a rustling behind the rows, in one film I believe it was something contained within a grain silo, and another it was a unseen force able to affect people's minds (my mind's a bit foggy but it may have at least appeared as monster in the third movie now I think about it). Here, the unwise choice was made to show it represented as a CG corn-man, something that rather than strike fear into my heart, made me think of Groot from The Guardian's of the Galaxy films, or even worse, the 'Jolly Green Giant' from the sweetcorn adverts. The reliance on CG in the later half of the film never worked, the CG while not terrible, still looked artificial, and the mystique is ruined by this monster-like creature rather than an unseen almighty demonic God. There was a bodycount, but mainly the film remained tame, many characters dying off screen, though a few nice moments, such as someone getting ripped in half vertically by the corn monster, and a brutal metal baseball bat to the head. The reliance on CG becomes more and more apparent, leading up to a ridiculous final twist that was laughable rather than frightening.
If this had stuck to being an origin story then I think things may have worked out for the best. I was on board for this, so was disappointing to watch the film flounder and try and become its own thing. This had some occasional good ideas, and it was fun to see Bruce Spence (Mad Max 2) in a side role, but overall I was left with a feeling that the film was too bland for its own good, and the reliance on CG and a limited number of locations really didn't help make this memorable. Children of the Corn comes to digital platforms on 31st July thanks to Vertigo Releasing.
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