Children of the Corn was released in 1984 and for some reason it caught me. I have always talked about A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge as my first horror movie. But looking back, I can remember my mother telling me I would watch Children of the Corn all of the time. She claimed it was pre-Nightmare. I remember being terrified when watching as a smaller child. But, in the early 1990s I found a copy on VHS and finally, after many years, I relived Children of the Corn. It did not terrify me or even give me a scare. The scares were in the reality of Children following a crazy religious fanatic in ridding their town, Gatlin of all adults. It was the story that was intriguing, not the fact it is a horror movie.
In 1992, I was watching TV and a commercial randomly came on TV and it was for Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice. The trailer looked great and I was pretty excited, finally we were getting a sequel to a movie I simply loved.
It took a lot of asking, but my mom let me go to the theater and see Children of the Corn II. This was to make up for not letting me see Freddy’s Dead a couple of years prior. I remember loving the movie upon my first viewing. I was 12 and I had no idea what a “good movie” really was. I always wanted to own a copy of the movie and it took forever to get one. So I was left with the memory of what I thought was a good movie.
The DVD copy I own is a collection 6 movies and the quality is unbearable to view. They look like straight up VHS rips. Not good, I couldn’t get far into the movie and had to stop. I am no “HD snob”, but it was bad. This past weekend, the EL Rey network had their “August Harvest” and played Children of the Corn II thru 666. So, I sat back and watched the first couple, I couldn’t make it through Urban Harvest, it is awful and I know they get worse from there.
The Final Sacrifice picks up shortly after the events of first film. The children left from Isaac and Malachi are being taken in to homes of a town near Gatlin. There is a large press presence following the story of all the towns children murdering their parents. A reporter, John and his son, Danny are late in getting the scoop and need to stay in town. The reporter and his son are fighting, teen angst and all or the father isn’t around. The children are not giving up their religious beliefs of “He who walks behind the rows”. Danny meets a girl and quickly falls in love with the only normal girl in the entire town, Lacey, played by Christie Clark. Christie Clark played Jesse’s sister in A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge.
Micah one of the children left behind gets…possessed by some force within the corn after the children gather in the corn. John investigates for his story and eventually meets a Native American named Dr. Red Bear. They bond and work together to uncover a secret within the town and find reason for the children’s crazy behavior.
I don’t want to spoil the ending. I will say, not a bad follow-up to the original, it just took too long. I don’t think it was terrible, the cast was a straight to video cast, so don’t expect much from them. The story, overall is ok, but there is so much about it that did not need to be there. I say this once and a while, but this story is cheap and I think they added a lot as filler because the movie would have been long enough, maybe to fill a hours worth of film. I don’t know, I don’t think it is terrible, but not great.
This brings me to, what I think could be an interesting thing. I would love to see a Children of the Corn television series. 10 to 13 episodes mini-series or 13 episodes and multiple seasons. I think in this day and age it could happen and be very good. I don’t know. Watching these movies makes me think they could expand on each movie into season long stories.
Children of the Corn II: the Final Sacrifice is ok.
IMDB.com has a rating of 4.2
While this was released wide in theaters, it really wasn’t terrible, I give it 5.6
