Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering (1996)

the audience applauded

hyped garbage

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

All the kids in a town over night become feverish and have convulsions. The next day they start to become evil, change their names for those of kids killed long ago, and then start killing any adult in their path, in vicious and mysterious forms.Not only does this film star talented actresses like Karen Black and a young Naomi Watts, but the direction is very solid and great performances were given by everyone. Others have said this is the best film in the series (even outdoing the original), and I think that a case could be made for that. Certainly it is better than part three, which is ironic considering that this film was straight-to-video and part three actually appeared in theaters.The entire franchise is a bit silly, and how it resulted in so many sequels (seven?) is beyond me. The original is now considered a classic, but I am not entirely sure why. It seems like the idea was to make as many sequels as possible until the original had to be considered a classic by default.

***SPOILERS*** The 4th installment of "He who walks behind the Rows" who's never even mentioned, much less seen, once in the movie. We do have a corn filed in it that has really nothing to do with the plot but has the local town's sheriff Biggs of Grand Island Nebraska, Richard Gross, slaughtered in it while out at night looking for runaway Marcus Atkins, Lewis Flanagan III. Marcus went a bit nuts after he was infected with a mysterious illness that made him forget who he is and start thinking that he's in fact someone else. Like all the other kids of Grand Island who were infected by it.We have pre-med student Grace Rhodes, Naoma Watts, traveling home to Grand Island to visit her crazy mom June, Karen Black, and her 14 year old brother James, Mark Salling,and younger sister Margaret, Jamie Renee Smith, for the summer. It's then that Grace gets a job with the town physician Doc Larson, William Windom, whom she worked for before going away to collage. It's at Doc's clinic that strange things begin to happen with it suddenly being overcrowded with children who came down with high fevers and suffering from mercury poisoning. No one knows what's causing these strange maladies until we get the low down towards the end of the movie from the elderly and almost senile Nock sisters Jane & Rosa, Salle Ellis & Marietta Marich, about some boy preacher named Josiah who was kept young by his followers by stuffing him with mercury in order to stunt his growth.It's seems that the preacher boy was later burned at the stake by his disappointed, in him growing up, followers and is now back seeking revenge by getting the children of the town to slaughter all the adults for what they, or their parents and grand parents, did to him. There's also the side story to who's to replace this Josiah who's to come from the same background that he came from: In being abounded by his or her parents.Very confusing story especially in what the purpose in it is of showing grasshoppers or locust as evil messenger's of the devil without explaining why. We do in fact have some very shocking slasher, with the use of a scythe, scenes in it that makes the movie worth watching if you have the stomach to see them through. Even these scenes get a bit overdone with in one case poor Doc Larson who was cut in two earlier in the film getting shot to pieces by his assistant Grace, who didn't recognize him, with a shotgun as his other half, the bottom part of his body, was lying in state.***SPOILERS*** It's Mr, Donald Atkins, Brant Jennings, young Marcus's dad who finally finds the magic bullet, filled with mercury, that can put an end to this horror. Atkins together with Grace drives down to the old Spelling Barn where the possessed town children are holding a rally, or human sacrifice, in order to save them from themselves. Even though Donald did the driving through the corn field it was Grace who did the blasting with her shotgun who finally put an end to this bloody, with all the kids cutting their hands open and dripping their blood into what looked like a wooden punchbowl, insanity. That's until the next cornball "Children of the Corn" flick comes to video store of theater near you to start it all over again.

Children of the Corn: The Gathering (1996) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Good performances and direction help this fourth film in the series be the best so far. A registered nurse (Naomi Watts) moves back home to Nebraska to help her mother (Karen Black) who is slowly losing her mind. The town's children come down with a mysterious virus and soon they are killing adults apparently with the possessed soul of a boy who died fifty-years earlier. Normally you'd expect the fourth film in a rather mediocre series to be the pits but that's not the case here as we have a fairly good story brought to life with some nice acting and good direction. Watts steals the film as she manages to make her character very believable and shows a good strength, which allows her to carry the movie without any problems. Black is pretty much being Black as she plays the weirdo but who better to do that than her? I was also impressed with Brent Jennings as a father accused of killing him wife and William Windom as the local doctor. The actual story, as with the previous two entries, is far away from King's original short story but that might not be such a bad thing. This entry also contains some of the most brutal killings, which leads to all types of gore. One scene has a farmer getting all the equipment used to rip him apart and the every loving scythes. The red stuff is constantly pouring but it never gets in the way of the story, which believe it or not, is trying to be told here.

"Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering" is the fourth installment in the "Children of the Corn" series, and was surprisingly a decent sequel. After the horrible monster effects in Part III's finale (which almost completely ruined the movie for me) I was hoping "The Gathering" would head in a new direction, which it did. This sequel concerns a small town in the midwest. Naomi Watts plays Grace, a medical student who returns to care for her mother, and in turn, her young siblings, who begin to display a strange illness manifesting in all the town's children. Turns out that the cult of children are back, trying to recruit more young'ns (after killing their parents) into their organization for "he who walks behind the rows".No doubt, one of the most memorable things about this film is Naomi Watts' performance, who showed chops even her in her first lead role. I'm sure most people who see this will recognize her from the hit Japanese remake "The Ring." Even still, "Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering" is one of the standout films of the series for a variety of other reasons. It is well-shot, for one; while it is a direct-to-video picture, it surprisingly doesn't really look like one. There is an unnerving sleepiness to the film that plays off of the bucolic midwestern set pieces, and some phenomenally creepy sequences featuring Karen Black as Watts' agoraphobic mother. The film makes ample use of its dusty farmhouses and the sinister images of children lurking across the road.Granted, the film does show its B-movie teeth in some of the murder sequences, which are far- fetched and at times absurd, but the splatter factor here is strong and the gore effects are rather convincing overall. Another obvious but vital element to this film working as well is it does is the strength of the performances. Watts, again, is great in her first lead here, and Karen Black is phenomenal as she always is— the role leaves her plenty of room to act out the eccentricities she does so well. Even the performances from the children are above-average for a film like this.Overall, if you're a fan of the series, this is one of the better (and perhaps maybe the best) sequel. It's a "Children of the Corn" sequel, so obviously it is not a flawless film, but it is well-shot and there are a handful of genuinely effective moments to be had, and the film paces itself well without devolving into schlock. Enjoy your straight-to-video splat with a side of Watts and Karen Black— how can you go wrong? 7/10.