Directed by David Price
Starring Terence Knox, Paul Scherrer, Ryan Bollman, Christie Clark, Rosalind Allen and Ned Romero
So I had never seen any of the 17 sequels to Children of the Corn. To make a short story even shorter, Netflix has every single one of these things available on demand. Now, I have seen one. And...it kinda sucks.
Ok, maybe that's a little harsh. I distinctly remember when this movie hit theaters - I was a little bastard back then, but I had seen bits and pieces of the original movie on cable. Remember 1992, people? I do. A truly grand time, when Hulk Hogan was just rapping up his first run in the WWF and hip hop was still in its golden age. I'm sorry...allow me to wallow in nostalgia for a moment. Ahhh, 1992. I can't imagine that movie executives were exactly EAGER to start trotting out sequels to Children of the Corn. The first movie made money, but it was definitely no gigantic hit. Stephen King did everything but disown the movie. Nevertheless, it had garnered quite the following on video over the years, which meant that we would eventually get THIS - a micro-budgeted cheapie of a sequel that was in and out of theaters quicker than a hiccup but, just like the original movie, made back its budget many times over.
Why have we gotten the aforementioned 16 follow-up movies AFTER this one? That's why.
Since we're dealing with a movie that labored in development hell for a while and went through a bunch of rewrites, we've got a plenty disjointed setup when it comes to the first act of this flick. For starters, we have to get the Kooky Kids' Kult (KKK? That's not Good!) back into full swing. The kids from Gatlin, Nebraska in the original film are just kind of milling around, and fortunately, the good folks at nearby Hemingford (a town that was also featured prominently in Stephen King's best novel ever, The Stand) are willing to adopt them. Within short order, the children go out into a nearby cornfield where one of them, Micah, is possessed by the demon from the original movie and becomes your star villain. He's played by Ryan Bollman. He tries, but he's no Jacob or Malachi, that's for damn sure.
Meanwhile, we need a reason to care. Therefore, the script gives us the classic "father and son who don't get along" dichotomy. The dad is named John Garret, and he's a reporter who sees this story about a town of kids who KILLED THEIR PARENTS as his ticket to stardom. Because in the the total history of horror movies, this sounds like one of the most genius plans of all time. The movie tries to amp up its emotion with the son character Danny, played by Paul Scherrer and coming across as something like 50% less annoying than you'd expect a character like this to be. If I sound a little salty in this review, it's because everybody in this movie really does kind of come across like a cardboard cutout. With one exception.
Ladies and gentlemen, Christie Clark. Now, I knew the name before I watched this movie. She's the little girl who loved Fu Man Fingers in Nightmare on Elm Street 2. Said fingers were also the best part of that abomination. Here, though, she was all grown up, and man, she's something else, because she was doing a damn good job acting like she actually cared about Children of the Corn II. She's Danny's love interest Lacey, and even though it's essentially her job to be Pauline in peril throughout the movie's money sequences, she's the only person in this movie who doesn't just go through the motions. Lo and behold, I found out in my extensive research that she had a long run on Days of Our Lives that began in 1985 and wrapped in 2012. So three gold stars for her.
The last thing I ever expected when I wrote a review of Children of the Corn II: the Christie Clark love fest. End communication.
And back to our regularly scheduled programming. That about wraps up all the main ingredients for what we're dealing with here. Micah promptly starts using his newfound magical powers to start killing people. One of the early deaths has him using a freakin' VOODOO DOLL on somebody. I have to say, I didn't expect to see that when I watched this movie, either. The script then introduces a kind of secondary hero character in Frank Red Bear, a University bigwig who believes that the corn itself is responsible for the increasing town body count (it has reached something like five or six by the time this dude gets involved in the story). Something about its toxic properties...by this point, I had kind of stopped caring, I'm not gonna lie. You know, when I spend an entire paragraph singing the pages of Fu Man Girl, we're in trouble, and that's what this movie is. It's all just THERE.
The film DOES pick up in its third trimester, as the cult kidnaps both Angela and Lacey while troubled son Danny has to go and save them. Wait, Angela? I just realized that I completely left her out of this review. Yeah, this movie ALSO has a love interest for John. She runs the local bed and breakfast, and that's all you need to know. Shits and giggles, a couple of fake-out deaths, and a pretty nifty little sequence where Micah actually transforms into a demon just before the movie comes to a close. Somewhat mercifully.
If you get the impression that this movie wasn't good, then I've done my job successfully. It's not offensively bad or anything. You're not going to see a ton of stuff that should have belonged on MST3K here. For its budget, it's competently done and even competently acted. But that's just the problem. Folks...this movie is boring. That's the worst thing that you can say about anything, whether it's a movie or a TV show or a video game. It's alright to watch if you're, I don't know, half-asleep and really don't feel like paying attention to what you're watching. But if you watch it on a Saturday night like I did ready to have some solid riffing material, you're in for disappointment. * 1/2 out of ****. And yes, sooner or later, I WILL get to the later sequels.
Alrighty then. Now that this flick is out of the way, I can gear up for what is to come. October. Halloween season, Samhain time, the celebration of the harvest. Whatever you want to call it, it's the best month of the year, and it's truly ground zero for horror watching. Preferably in binges. This year, I'm going to be reviewing the four classic Universal Monster movies - Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy and the Wolf Man are comin' at ya next month, so get ready. As it turns out, I DID review the original Boris Karloff Frankenstein back when I did the International Horror Registry thing. But that review sucked, so it's getting a George Lucas-esque reboot.
* cue lightning *
It's alive...alive!
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