Originally, I was meant to be watching something totally different for today's film review, but due to being an idiot and forgetting to request a screener, the film I intended to watch was locked away from me. Without looking I reached a rotting hand into my unwatched DVD shelf and pulled out randomly Children of the Corn: Revelation. This is the seventh film in the series, but having been a fan of these in my teens, I have actually seen all the ones that came before. This wasn't a good film, but it came from a nostalgic era for me, the early 2000s where CG was just starting to be used, and horror films were often enjoyably cheesy.
Jamie's (Claudette Mink - R.L. Stine's The Haunting Hour TV series) has been increasingly worried about the behaviour of her beloved grandma. First she moved to a dilapidated apartment building in a small rural town that was subsequently marked as condemned two months after she moved in, and then, more recently, she stopped returning Jamie's phone calls. Worried for her, Jaime decides to head to the apartment to see if everything is ok. She finds the building in a very poor state, with most the inhabitants save for a few already left, and her grandma nowhere to be seen. Of course, we as the viewer can guess her fate, as she was seen likely on the way to her death in the movie's prologue sequence. Jamie keeps seeing creepy children dressed in old fashioned clothes around the town who all give her evil looks. With the local police station not believing her grandma is actually missing. Eventually, she comes to believe that all the spooky goings on may be down to a cult made up of children, who operated in the area in the distant past.
This carries on the fine tradition of the Children of the Corn movies by having the evil antagonist 'He Who Walks Behind the Rows' turn up in a completely different look to previous films. Before, it has been portrayed as an invisible force, a giant monster, even as a sentient grain silo(!), here, the eventual reveal is that of a child dressed up like a preacher, but who speaks with a dubbed over deep adult voice that both made me laugh out loud as well as being pretty neat. While this is a sequel, there is a bit of a ret-con going on, as the child cult are now said to have been operating in the 1960's, not in the eighties and nineties as the previous films had it. I thought it was cool that it is suggested that rather than be actual children, this time around they are actually evil ghosts of the cult members. It leads to one cool scene in which a man is able to see the children while wearing night vision goggles, but each time he removes them the children are nowhere to be found.
There is a decent enough body count, but it is a shame that all the on-screen deaths, while fun, aren't exactly that exciting. Included are people being thrown from heights, a drowning, and someone who has a heart attack. The most exciting looking kill, that of a character getting their head sliced off, is sadly one that takes place off screen. I did think the moving vines from the nearby corn field leaking blood when cut into was a decent idea. There is some use of obvious CG, but thankfully this is kept to a bare minimum rather than being over-used. I liked Mink's protagonist, but only really because she really resembled Claire Redfield from the Resident Evil 2 video game. Her determination to locate her missing grandma becomes a bit silly, especially when she has visions that clearly show what happened to her. I thought Michael Ironside (voice of Sam Fisher from the Splinter Cell video games) was a great side character, was just a shame it was an almost blink and you miss it appearance, despite his exposition serving role. The majority of the movie takes place in the apartment block, and it has a great grimy run-down look to it.
I have a soft spot for this series, this straight to video sequel is not a great film, but it sure does feel like a horror from the early 2000s, an era that is a bit of a guilty pleasure for me. I like that like the other films before it, it isn't afraid to mix up the formula somewhat, even if the many kills aren't the most exciting to watch, and ghostly kids were lame rather than spooky. This is certainly better than the snore fest that was the 2020 Children of the Corn reboot.
SCORE:
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