Children of the Corn (2009)

Sick Product of a Sick System

Did you people see the same film I saw?

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

The acting in this movie is really good.

The second (small) screen version of Stephen Kings' short story stars David Anders and Kandyse McClure as the couple Burt and Vicky Stanton. Burt & Vicky, whose relationship has turned utterly venomous, are travelling cross country. On their way through Nebraska, they run down a child in the road - only for Burt to realize that the kid was basically dead before they hit him; his throat was slashed. Making it to the nearby tiny town of Gatlin, they are soon confronting the towns' children, who have turned murderous and now pray to a different sort of God named "He Who Walks Behind the Rows".This version is scripted by King himself and director Donald P. Borchers, who'd produced the 1984 feature film. Unlike the original, "Children of the Corn" '09 is scrupulously faithful to the story. (Not that being faithful is always necessarily a good thing.) Burt and Vicky are NOT getting along to begin with, so their current situation only makes things worse. Problem with this is that you'll probably find it hard to care about this idiot couple. He comes off slightly better, but only because he's more low key and isn't nearly as insufferable as she is. He's still a stubborn dummy, of course, and their inability to get the Hell out of Dodge before the excrement hits the fan merely serves to seal their fate.One new wrinkle this time is to make Burt & Vicky an inter-racial couple, not that it actually adds anything to the story. That element is just sort of there. The King / Borchers teleplay also goes awfully heavy on the 'Nam parallels, making Burt a veteran who ends up flashing back to his time in the service. There's also some good old fashioned sex to spice things up a little.The original film may have been laughable, and ultimately cheesy, but at least it had more personality, and was more entertaining, than this. It's not good when you can't bring yourself to root for the protagonists. Anders and McClure do whatever they're capable of with these roles, but they're easily outshone by Daniel Newman, as Malachai, and Preston Bailey, as the intense boy preacher Issac. Still, these two kids aren't going to stick in your memory the way that Courtney Gains and John Franklin do.One worthy component is the music by Jonathan Elias (who scored the '84 film) and Nathaniel Morgan. Robert Kurtzman supplies the decent enough gore.This viewer didn't hate this adaptation nearly as much as some people, but will concede that the '84 film shows people a generally better time, despite its utterly goofy, upbeat ending.If you stick it out to the bitter end, there IS a final scene following the end credits.Six out of 10.

Anytime Isaac said something in this movie a started laughing, though that was not the only time I laughed at this movie. I don't know why they decided to cast someone so young for Isaac, definitely an awful choice, though a humorous one. The male lead was flatter than the road they were driving on and the female lead was ridiculously over-dramatic. This movie did not have any of the tension and creepiness of the original. Malachai was as comical as the original. The female lead NEVER stopped talking, it was just a constant torrent of her bickering with her , it was relentless. Her performance was awful. By far the worst part of this movie. The best line of the movie was when her husband said "Just give it a rest". Half of her lines didn't even make any sense. She would just start blurting out random garbage. No effort to improve upon the original, which could use a lot of improvement. 1/10

I was dozing when this came on and Kandyse McClure's screaming and nagging got me off the couch and moving around like I should have been. I swear I wanted to punch her in the face until my arms got too tired to lift. It's hard to see how her 'psycho' war vet boyfriend didn't snap and tear her head off her body. He's all cool and calm and she's gone full shrieking harpy for what must have been 10 or 12 minutes until he slapped her once which shut her up for maybe 45 seconds.This is the kind of movie that makes you wish an asteroid came down in the cornfield and wipes out most of the state and everyone in it. Who knows maybe in the 5th remake it will and aliens will pop out and join forces with the Amish Devil-Children or whatever they are. Nothing that anyone does makes the least sense. Ever. Whatever a rational self-preserving non retarded person would do, these characters do the opposite. So you're sort of rooting for the Devil-Farmers pretty soon. You're hoping there's a treasure trove of rusty farm tools with which they can use to slaughter the cast.

Children of the Corn is set in 1975 & starts as Vietnam vet Burt Stanton (David Anders) & his wife Vicky (Kandyse McClure) drive across Nebraska, Burt decides to leave the highway & take the scenic route which leads to an argument between himself & Vicky. While not paying attention to the road Burt runs a young boy down, when Burt looks at the boy's body he notice's that his throat had been cut & it was only a matter of time before he had died anyway. The couple decide to drive to a town called Gatlin, the nearest town for miles in any direction. Once there Burt & Vicky find it completely abandoned & like it has been deserted since the early 60's, then while looking around Vicky is kidnapped by a group of children who have killed all the adults & sacrifice anyone older than nineteen to their God who they worship who they call He Who Walks Behind the Rows. Burt discovers this & attempts to find & save Vicky as well as himself from the children who insist on a blood sacrifice to He Who Walks Behind the Rows...Written, produced & directed by Donald P. Borchers this made for television remake of a short story by Stephen King has been panned by pretty much everyone but I have to say I quite liked it, sure it's no masterpiece but I found it watchable enough. Originally a short story written by Stephen King in 1977 that featured in his anthology Night Shift (which is a fine read by the way) Children of the Corn was first adapted to the silver screen in 1984 in a version that many seem to dislike although I am again of the opposite opinion & really like it before numerous sequels came out starting with Children of the Corn II: The Final Scarifice (1992) & Children of the Corn: Genesis (2011) being the latest installment while this was made somewhere between them. The original short story by King was only fifteen pages long & this sticks to it closely, in fact it's far more faithful than the 1984 version. I liked the first hour a lot, the build-up & when everything is still a mystery but once the children feature more regularly & the script tries to flesh them out & give them reasons for what they do it falls apart a little. None of it is particularly convincing & it's hard to believe that children could kill every adult in town & no-one ever finds out. What about supplies? The electric company? Friends & relatives of the adult's? At just under 90 minutes it moves along at a good pace & has some nice moments although the constant bickering between Burt & Vicky gets annoying, the constant arguments & insults make both character's quite unlikable & while you can tolerate them for fifteen pages of a story it's more difficult to sit through over an hour of them sniping at each other & moaning. The script stays focused on the story & doesn't get sidetracked with subplots & the story builds quite nicely before we get an ending that is more downbeat & faithful to the short story even though it's not an audience pleaser.The film takes place entirely in the small town & the outer corn fields of the 70's, the period explains the lack of technology & mobile phone's I suppose. There's some gore in it, a Pig is cut open, there's a slit throat throat, some blood splatter, a few dead bodies & someone gets a compound fracture of his arm. The children themselves are all dressed in black and white clothes like Amish, the one little kid Isacc has this huge hat on which looks a bit daft & some of the kid's are just too cute looking & not menacing enough. There's a little bit of sex & nudity as well but nothing too explicit.With a supposed budget of about $2,000,000 this looks a lot better than the usual SyFy Channel film & I suspect they didn't make it & only brought the rights to show it after it was finished, filmed in Iowa. The acting is alright, the two leads do what's asked of them even if their character's are unlikable.Children of the Corn is a good story & I have to say that I like both the original 1984 adaptation & this 2009 version although I prefer the former, this isn't that bad at all actually & thought it was perfectly watchable & even quite effective at times although maybe it doesn't satisfy completely.