So, the following year brought us the 6th film, which brought back the original Isaac (played by John Franklin, the original actor!) and was creatively titled Children of the Corn 666: Isaac’s Return. A young woman who was adopted out believes her real mother lives in a small town where Isaac has been comatose for over a decade. One thing that stands out about the Children of the Corn films is almost no continuity. Beyond the first film, they all act like that is the only story that happened at all.
So, Isaac is part of the cult and nothing happened, except, yet again, adults seem in on helping He Who Walks Behind the Rows now. I mean, again.
There is the attempt at early mis direction of the handsome young man that our lead girl meets is a nice guy, but he is later revealed to be HWWBtR. So, this ends badly for Isaac. HWWBtR seduces our lead girl and the film ends on the cliffhanger reveal that she is pregnant with his child.
The next film dumps the numbering system, calling itself Children of the Corn: Revelation. It also completely ignores the events of the prior film. Here, a young woman goes to check on her Grandmother, who used to be part of the child cult. We mainly see two kids, who appear to be ghost kids. They go around this apartment building that is condemned killing everyone living there. The weird part is that the building appears to be in the middle of a corn field.
I actually started having a theory about these films starting with this one…I will share it around the time I get to Runaway, the ninth film in the franchise (well, tenth if you include the remake).
So in Children of the Corn: Genesis (Get it?) we begin with a soldier returning home from the Vietnam war. He finds kids have killed his family. We jump to the present and a couple’s car breaks down and when they try and find help, they end up in the home of Preacher. He is revealed to be the vet from earlier. He keeps a kid locked up in a shed and the kid appears to have major psychic powers. Again, we have an adult leading things and little connection to HWWBtR.
The couple almost escape, but then the husband is killed and the wife is brought back to be a part of the cult. Again, the ties to the previous films are non-existent.
2018’s Children of the Corn Runaway is (again) about someone who escaped from the cult and then returns to town decades later with her teen son. There are all sorts of struggles as she tries to come to terms with her past only to have it all threaten to destroy her family.
So, about my theory. Revelation, Genesis and Runaway were not originally meant to be part of the Children of the Corn franchise. The studio bought independent scripts and had them reworked into being Children of the Corn sequels. None of them bear any resemblance to the original short story or the prior films in any way. They add elements contradictory to the core concept. In Runaway? If you remove the opening couple of minutes and the closing minutes, you would have no idea that you were watching a Children of the Corn film.
It is an attempt at a supernatural slasher…and it tries to make you question if the killer is really the one child we see throughout the film or if it might be the lead character. But it never really gels in a way that makes it a good film.
Before they picked the franchise up with new sequels (there was a ten year break between Revelation and Genesis, and almost six between Genesis and Runaway) they tried a remake that aired on the SyFy channel in 2009.
In this remake, our couple Burt and Vicky are much less in love and their marriage is on the rocks. Part of the strain appears to be Burt’s PTSD. When they run over a boy while driving through rural America, they go to the nearest town for help. Once there, they find a seeming ghost town.
The film goes for being a lot more gritty, yet seems like they choose to avoid some stuff. Like we never see the kids slaughter the grownups of their town. On the other hand, the filmmakers felt it was important that ew know the kids have a plan to keep the cult going by two of the eighteen year olds have sex in a ceremony why the others watch. Hoo boy.
This one also ends on a very bleak and hopeless note. Burt and Vicky save nobody…and HWWBtR gets to proceed unimpeded. This remake seemed more like an attempt to be part of SyFy’s attempts at serious fare, but it is not really that exciting or interesting. It brings nothing of note. I suppose it is a little better than the other films, including the original movie…but that is just not saying much. This is a franchise that lacks one solid flick and yet, somehow? The franchise just keeps moving on.
So, originally, I was going to review each of the Children of the Corn Films. But frankly, I did not feel like writing detailed reviews of all ten films…because…well…
And then, about eight years later, just in time for cheap CGI, the first sequel arrived. John and his son Danny are driving cross country and get stuck in Gatlin, apparently right after the first film. The remaining kids are being taken to the next town over and reporters and police are everywhere, since everyone now knows the kids all killed their parents, they let them wander around town.
Three years later, we get Urban Harvest. Shortly after the events of the second film, Eli and his older brother Joshua are adopted by a couple and move to the big city. There, Eli starts to convert kids to his cult and plant s a corn field in backlot of their apartment building…because that would not look weird.
In the film, she returns to her small town home to help with her agoraphobic mother (Karen Black). She works for the local doctor and the town finds themselves under siege by Creepy Kids. This film tries to reign back the comedy, aiming more for creepy kid killings. But it is also just not much of a stand out.
This one has an early role for Eva Mendez, as well as a pre-transition Alexis Arquette. Again, creepy kids abound, but this time, an inexplicable trend is introduced. An adult who seems to be leading the cult. It does not make any real sense with the mythology, but each film kind of does whatever it wants.
Tripping Through Gateways 