Children of the Corn: Revelation (2001) - Horror Film Review

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.

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Valentine (2001) - Horror Film Review

Valentine is a slasher from director Jaime Blanks (Urban Legend) that felt very much of the 90s despite coming out in 2001. Initially I thought it was from that earlier decade, but the mention of the internet, and various characters having flip phones made me suspect it was more earlier 21st Century. This was recommended to me a couple of years ago by a London based friend I briefly had, and while this does have some good kills, overall it was lacking somewhat.

At a school Valentines disco in 1988 an awkward boy was looking for a girl to dance with but kept getting rejected. Eventually one agrees, but after they are discovered kissing by some bullies, the girl embarrassed claims he had instead forced himself onto her. This resulted in the innocent boy getting expelled from the school. Fast forward to 2001 and the girls from that party are still friends and in various stages of looking for love. One by one they begin to receive disturbing Valentine's Day cards and one by one they begin to get killed off by a cherub mask wearing killer. It seems the rejected boy has returned to get his revenge on those he holds responsible for ruining his life.

This has dated quite poorly, but that in itself gives Valentine a certain charm to it. This is a sexist world where male and females alike all seem to just exist to objectify each other. I can't think of a single interaction between the sexes that wasn't full of lustful looks and suspect dialogue. Even the detective investigating the murders (Fulvio Cecere - Resident Evil: Afterlife) isn't exempt, featuring in a scene played for laughs in which he sexually harasses one of the girls, Paige (Denise Richards -  The World is Not Enough, Starship Troopers). Out of all the protagonists it is Paige who is the most confident and self reliant. The other heroines are played by Marley Shelton (Planet Terror, Death Proof), Jessica Cauffiel (Grey's Anatomy), Jessica Cauffiel (Urban Legends: Final Cut) and Katherine Heigl (Grey's Anatomy) so there were a lot of familiar faces even if they all play bland character types who seemed to blur into one. The main male protagonist is Adam, played by David Boreanaz (Angel, Buffy the Vampire Slayer). His character was dark and brooding  and so didn't feel much different to Angel, aside from being an alcoholic here.

Autumn (2001) by David Moody - Zombie Horror Book Review

One of the first posts I ever wrote for The Rotting Zombie back in 2008 was a review of Autumn by David Moody. That post has since been deleted as it was terribly written as was most of my stuff back then. I still have a review of the second book in the series live, but that shall be deleted and replaced soon! David Moody is my all time favourite zombie author, his books are so good.

Some sort of deadly virus sweeps the globe, within a day billions are dead, only a handful of survivors survive, somehow immune to the infection. Autumn takes place in Britain where a group of traumatised survivors gather in an old community centre in Northwich. These include family man Carl, pragmatic Michael, and Emma; a student. No one is really coping with the sudden death of the world, everyone content to wallow in grief and argue amongst themselves. Michael sees the need to leave the town and get out to the country, the dead will cause mass disease. As if this was not all bad enough the bodies of the stricken start to rise, at first blindly stumbling around operating on instinct the corpses begin to change, to get more intelligent and to seek out any remaining humans.

Chapter twenty three, page one hundred and thirty four is when Autumn goes from being ok to amazing. It is at that point that the cadavers start to react to the humans, to start to follow them and begin to get angry. Now I understand the need to slowly have this happen, with Moody's zombies they are of a totally different type than the norm. These do not seek out life to feed on them, they seek out life as it is an anomaly in an otherwise dead world, they want to be close to life, to hold it. Not so bad when it is just a few but as the book progresses more and more zombies appear, drawn by the only noise for miles around. They are pitiful, weak, emaciated, frail yet unnerving in their behaviour, forever changing. While they have no ability to bypass obstacles they form mobs, fists smashing down on whatever is in their way.

I feel quite stupid for saying this but it was only on my fourth read through of the Autumn series that I realised it takes place in England and not America! So used to zombie stories being in the USA that my mind just assumed and ignored any blatant references (such as colloquial language used and the emergency number being referred to as 999 for instance). The characters of Michael, Carl and Emma are irritating for the most part. Carl in particular is so caught up in his grief for his dead family that he is a millstone around the other two peoples neck. Michael and Emma steadily get better as Autumn progresses, turning into likable heroes by the end. Though the survivors for the most part are annoying in their wallowing it actually does make a lot of sense, far too often characters in zombie books adjust remarkably well to the changing landscape. The way some chapters are told in first person from the viewpoints of the various characters is a good idea and helps give you some more insight into their thoughts and motivations

For all my putting it down Autumn is still a good, solid book and a great introduction to the Autumn series. From halfway through I just could not put it down, exciting to read. As I said the slow intro is needed to fully show the type of zombies this world has, later books are far more gripping from the go.

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