Children of the Corn (2009)

Now available on DVD

Cast:



David Anders as Burton Stanton



Kandyse McClure as Vicki



Daniel Newman as Malachai



Preston Bailey as Issac

Review:

Making a tense, scary movie from Stephen King’s short story “Children of the Corn” (found in his Night Shift collection) ought to be one of the all-time no-brainers but apparently – judging by the fact that all eight films in the now twenty-five year-old (!) franchise are abysmal – it’s impossible. Clearly, He Who Walks Behind The Rows needs to find a better agent because His career as a movie star has seen better days – although ‘better days’ is a relative term when we’re talking about the Children of the Corn films.

One of the producers on the original Children of the Corn, Donald P. Borchers, has returned to pull multiple duties on this remake as a writer/producer/director. While it might seem like this was a golden opportunity to correct the mistakes of the ’84 version, Borchers drops the ball in a big way.

Most egregious of the new film’s missteps is its heavy-handed anti-religion slant. I have no problem with lambasting organized religion but the plodding way in which it’s handled here without an ounce of subtlety is just too pedantic. When you have a group of kids who are following the marching orders of a deity who lives in the corn rows and who slaughter anyone over the age of eighteen to appease it, you’re already off to a good start in the ‘Religion Sure Is Crazy’ argument. You don’t need to beat the horse too much to get your point across. However, the larger problem with using this story to make a case against religion is that the kids in this story are actually right – there really is a He Who Walks Behind The Rows. They’re not killing in the name of a made-up, imaginary God – there’s actually something out there. So killing according to its will, while evil, isn’t necessarily crazy. Even though we don’t see He Who Walks Behind The Rows in the flesh (or even see it burrowing underground, as in the infamously cheesy effect from the original), we do see its handiwork as it make the corn stalks come to life to impede the escape of one character. If Borchers really wanted to take religion to task here, he would’ve had to make the kids truly crazy – zealots under the grip of a superstitious, mob mentality – and not acting at the service of a real entity.

Another issue with this new film is in the casting. Whatever failings the original film had, the one thing that guaranteed it immortality was its genius casting of Isaac and Malachai. In that film, actors John Franklin and Courtney Gains – as Isaac and Malachai, respectively – were about as ideally cast as any evil kids have ever been. They managed to make that ham-handed movie unforgettable (even if you didn’t find Franklin’s Isaac to be particularly menacing, he was still an indelible presence). On the other hand, the new Isaac (Preston Bailey) and the new Malachai (Daniel Newman) come up wanting in all areas. Bailey’s Isaac, in particular, is just ridiculous. I can’t fault the actor completely, although his voice really should’ve stopped taken him out of the running at the first audition. However, even the most chilling performance wouldn’t have been able to overcome the gi-normous hat that Bailey is given to wear in this movie. Maybe Borchers believes that giant hats are innately terrifying. Other than that possibility, I’m at a loss to explain why Bailey was outfitted with a hat big enough to hide a twenty-pound monkey.

And finally, as the squabbling couple that find themselves driving through the wrong area of Middle America, David Anders (as Burt) and Kandyse McClure (as Vicky) are not a very endearing pair. Anders and McClure make a valiant effort to make their flawed characters interesting but the dialogue they’re saddled with, composed of near-constant arguing, makes any kind of likeability impossible. Vicky comes off as the more sympathetic character of the two, if only because she has something that Burt clearly lacks – a functioning brain. Long after it becomes apparent that something is terribly wrong about the town of Gatlin, Nebraska, Burt insists on seeking out the authorities to report the accident in which he ran over a young boy who bolted into the road from out of the cornfields. Even though the boy had his throat slashed prior to the accident and even though Gatlin is obviously a ghost town at best, Burt refuses to listen to Vicky’s increasingly desperate pleas to either keep driving ahead or to go back the way they came. This kind of denial of a) his wife’s feelings and b) reality, make Burt look like a special brand of moron. Burt’s obliviousness hits its apex when he’s aimlessly poking around a church while outside in the street Vicky is frantically honking the car horn for help and a group of kids are in the process of bludgeoning the car into scrap metal. There’s so much noise between Vicky’s screams, the blaring horn, and all the windshields shattering, the inability of Burt to be aware of the commotion reaches comical proportions.

Throughout the film, Burt never seems capable of reacting to any situation in a sane or competent fashion. You’d think that after the kids of Gatlin make their presence known and that it’s clear that these kids are a murderous gang of munchkins, that the gravity of the situation would click a little harder with Burt but he talks to them the way he talks to Vicky – like they’re the idiots and he’s the one in charge. At one point Burt asks these kids where their parents are but given the circumstances – Vicky is missing (likely dead), their car is utterly destroyed, and there’s a mob of kids all holding weapons – “where’s your parents?” doesn’t seem to be a useful question. Rationality has gone out the window and this dumb ass is the last one to realize it.

For those who want to know more about the production of this latest chapter in the Children of the Corn saga, this DVD (with additional footage from its SyFy premiere, involving a sex scene late in the film) provides a 45-minute making-of feature entitled Rough Cuts: Remaking Children of the Corn. This doc is divided into four parts – “New Directions,” “Cast of the Corn,” “To Live And Die in Gatlin,” and “Fly on the Wall.” It does an adequate job of detailing all facets of the production but if there’s one lesson to be learned from a half-century of Children of the Corn, it’s the less time spent in Gatlin, the better. In the future, I think I’ll stay away from any further Children of the Corn movies. Just call it a religious epiphany.