DVD Review: Children of the Corn (2009)
Children Of The Corn (2009)
Studio: Starz/Anchor Bay
Release Date: October 6, 2009
Directed By: Donald P. Borchers
Cast: David Anders, Kandyse McClure, Daniel Newman, Preston Bailey & Alexa Nicolas.
Review By: Annie Riordan
Really? You need a synopsis for this movie? Are you serious? I mean, unless you’ve spent the last 30+ years living in a cornfield in the middle of Nebraska, you really have no excuse for not knowing what Children of the Corn is about. Shit, I think even people who HAVEN’T seen Children of the Corn know what Children of the Corn is about. It’s been parodied by everyone from The Simpson’s to South Park. How can you not know what Children of the Corn is about?
But, if you insist…
The year is 1975. Constantly quarreling couple Burt and Vicky are blasting down the back roads of Nebraska en route to California, arguing all the way. Seems the attempt at a second honeymoon isn’t working out all that well, and when Burt accidentally mows down a kid in the middle of the otherwise deserted road, the day just gets that much crappier. Upon closer inspection however, Burt realizes that the kid has had his throat cut and would have died regardless. Despite Vicky’s shrieks of protest, Burt loads the body into the trunk and takes off for the nearest town to report the crime.
Unfortunately, the nearest town is Gatlin, which looks to have been abandoned for years. But as Burt stubbornly continues to poke around, both he and Vicky meet the residents: a gaggle of evil quaker-esque kids, their fire-and-brimstone leader Isaac and his hulking henchman Malachai, all of whom are eager to introduce the couple to He Who Walks Behind The Rows.
Forgive me if I’m way off base here, but aren’t remakes (or re-imaginings, if you prefer) supposed to improve upon the original? Granted, most of them don’t, but isn’t that the general idea? The original Children of the Corn was no masterpiece, let’s be honest. It was goofy, cheesy and had terrible special effects. But it scored itself a place in pop-culture history for some very good reasons, namely John Franklin as Isaac – perhaps screendom’s creepiest man/child since Peter Bark literally chewed the scenery in 1981’s Burial Ground – and Courtney Gains as Malachai, whose dark scowl and evil grin radiated malicious intensity and whose long, pretty red hair attracted 80s stoner chicks like flies to fresh shit.
Here however, we have the teddy-bear cute Preston Bailey as Isaac, who is too young and too lispy to incite any true terror, and big mclargehuge Daniel Newman as Malachai, who comes off more like a dumb jock than an apostate of evil. And though this update is perhaps truer to the short story by Stephen King on which it was based, I was ready to kill Vicky myself before five minutes had elapsed. As portrayed by Kandyse McClure, Vicky is a human dental drill, endlessly shrieking, bellowing and whining, as unlikable here as she was in the book, truth be told. And though I’m not normally a big fan of misogyny in any way shape or form, I was deeply satisfied when Burt slapped her fucking face. Unfortunately, even that didn’t shut her up for long.
But after about an hour of faithfulness (including the intact familiar score, which was most welcome) COTC veers off the road and plows right into sensationalism-land, throwing in a totally unnecessary and rather disturbing sex scene (in which copulation becomes a spectator sport for the cheering tots) and a tacked on ‘Nam flashback, supposedly wherein we see the correlation between the atrocities of My Lai and the slaughteriffic ass-kicking that Burt is forced to dispense upon the corny children. Yeah, whatever.
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but this remake makes the original look like a friggin’ masterpiece.
