Mark Reviews Movies: CHILDREN OF THE CORN (2023)

Children of the Corn, RLJE Films

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | March 1, 2023

Stephen King's short story "Children of the Corn," as well as the various adaptations of the tale of rural kids who form a murderous cult, taps into fears of parenthood and of the notion that kids haven't developed enough to understand the consequences of their actions. Writer/director Kurt Wimmer's Children of the Corn, which serves as something of a reboot of and prequel to this general premise, flips things in a subversive and pointed way. Maybe the kids have a point.

Unfortunately, Wimmer's twist on the setup and the perspective of this horror tale doesn't last for long or really develop its most terrifying idea in any meaningful way. Before this story transforms into a repetitive thriller and an even more generic monster movie, though, the filmmaker clearly has something to say. It's angry and scary enough that it's all the more disappointing that everything surrounding the idea is so clumsy.

The setting is a small town in Nebraska, surrounded by farmland that made the place and its population prosper. In recent times, a blight has struck the fields upon fields of corn in the area. Some believe an agricultural company, which made a deal with the local farmers to use its genetically modified strains and assorted chemicals for a sizeable sum of money, is to blame. The local pastor is convinced it's the general immorality of the townsfolk that has brought this disaster. Whatever the reason, the local economy is a shambles, leaving people miserable, and a nighttime walk through the residential area of town lets one hear yelling, arguing, and fighting coming from just about every house that's passed.

Two kids matter the most to this story. One is Bo (Elena Kampouris), a 17-year-old girl with dreams of leaving this town for college and hopes that her education will later help her find a way to solve all the place's problems. She's a good kid and, hence, just boring enough in terms of character and clean enough in terms of motive to serve as a horrified spectator to all the carnage that's about to unfold.

The other kid is the young Eden (Kate Moyer), an orphan who survives an assault on the facility where she has spent a good part of her life. The first attack came a teenage boy who disappeared into a cornfield for a several days, only to return to start killing as many adults in the orphanage as he could. The second assault arrived with the local Sheriff's department, which pumped aerial animal tranquilizer into the building, killing all of the children that the boy spared.

That setup likely will seem in bad taste to a good number of people, but it's not as if tragedy after tragedy of mass violence, far too often involving children, hasn't shown us how regularly our systems and institutions fail us. This movie reflects those cases of failure and the disillusionment that comes with it.

The rest of the plot, which has Eden leading a violent and bloody revolution against the adults in town, touches upon other topics that already feel overwhelming to adults and must haunt this younger generation. The whole matter with the corn is an environmental disaster that unfolded slowly and now has resulted in unthinkable devastation. The adults don't care what the kids, who will inherit this town soon, have to say (The way one local man laughs at and mocks Eden for suggesting that her like should have a vote is so over-the-top that it should give one an idea of how clunky the execution of this basically clever reversal is).

Wimmer has taken King's story about parental anxiety and turned it into a parable about trying to scare adults straight. Maybe it's not just kids who aren't always capable of comprehending the consequences of their own actions. Unlike children, the actions of adults define society and the world at large—for good and, when it comes to taking steps to protect kids from violence and ecological disaster, for ill.

That's the generous reading of this movie, and if Wimmer stuck to it or developed it in any way other than offering lip service, he might have been on to something. Instead, we get a most-witless battle between Bo, who's terrible at pretending to be on Eden's side (It's shocking how many times she loudly conspires with some adult about betraying the young leader), and Eden, who is convinced that a creature in the cornfields will protect the kids in exchange for sacrifices. The biggest misstep of Children of the Corn, then, is its belief that some computer-generated monster is scarier than our ability to mess up everything—and to be on the receiving end of the consequences.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products