Children of the Corn

Children of the Corn
1984
Directed by Fritz Kiersch

I found Children of the Corn somewhat frustrating. On the one hand, the story is based around some interesting ideas that leave you with a few thoughts to chew on once the credits start to roll. On the other, it's an often poorly-executed film that lacks cohesion and defies all logic. It also went on to inspire something like six sequels.

Taking place in the small Nebraska town of Gatlin, Children of the Corn begins ominously as the children of the town slaughter all of the adults in the local coffee house. Turns out they've been hanging out in the cornfields, taking instruction from Isaac, a young preacher with unusual religious beliefs. An odd mix of fanatical Christian fundamentalism and paganism, Isaac has been spreading the word of He Who Walks Behind the Rows, a sort of menacing harvest deity. Small and off the map, Gatlin seems to go unnoticed by the outside world for several years, during which time it is tended to by the children - all the adults being dead. This is all narrated by an annoyingly chipper kid named Job, who lives with his sister Sarah, in hiding from Isaac's followers. Sarah has the completely unnecessary gift of clairvoyance, and can draw pictures of the future. This does not really add anything to the story, and I found it to be distracting.

Vicky and Burt (Linda Hamilton of Terminator and Peter Horton) roll into town on their way to Seattle, and they discover a kid with his throat slashed in the middle of the road. They go for help but of course, all they find are creepy kids who want to kill them. That's the setup. Overall, it's kinda plodding and a little bit tedious at times, but Kiersch manages to keep some tension, and the cornfields and abandoned town are oddly creepy in the middle of the day.



I could go on more about the plot, but really the main reasons I like this movie are merely incidental to the plot. As I said, there are some interesting ideas floating around. For one thing, one might wonder why a wholesome town full of Christian kids would turn into an adult-murdering mob of cultists. The inference drawn from the film is that these kids were already familiar with the sort of fire and brimstone preaching of Isaac; it is in fact eerily similar to many of the fundamentalist Christian sects that exist to this day in some rural parts of America. Isaac's religious diatribe regarding human sacrifice is similar in tone to a Christian rant heard on the radio as Vicky and Burt enter God's country. As Burt points out to them, these kids were in effect groomed for this sort of behaviour. Mob mentality and cruelty come quite naturally to children. What has occurred is like a reverse-order Lord of the Flies. Instead of society falling apart after the removal of adults, lack of adult supervision and the outside influence of Isaac act upon childish impulses to achieve said removal. Of course, the diminutive Isaac cannot achieve this all on his own; as in Lord of the Flies, he too has his bullies to uphold the moral order, personified in the person of Malachai, a red-headed brute who carries out the Lord's dirty work.

I admit, I may be reading too much into a movie that is frequently mediocre. I have a tendency to be forgiving to low-budget films. I sometimes make excuses for them. For instance, why does it take Burt and Vicky so long to figure out what's going on in Gatlin? Clearly abandoned except for a bunch of creepy corn decorations, and also the location of the dead kid they found, and filled with graffitti (in blood, no less) stating "He who walks behind the rows sees all" and other similarly encouraging and wholesome sayings, Gatlin is obviously not the place to be. But, I think to myself, being decent folk, they would have no reason to suspect the rather far-fetched truth. They suffer from the common adult delusion that children are innocent and incapable of committing atrocities.

Less easy to forgive are the film's many incosistencies and its constantly changing tone. At one moment, Vicky and Burt are frantic and upset - after all, they have a dead kid with his throat slashed in their trunk and the distinct feeling that they're being watched. But this doesn't stop them from smiling and making smart-assed remarks minutes later. With its haunting and atmospheric musical score, and its austere and haunting landscape shots, Children of the Corn begs to be taken seriously... and then a jarringly silly and inappropriate bit of dialogue totally screws up the moment. Job's shrill narration would be better left to "Leave it to Beaver" reruns. Still, the scenes with him and his sister have a sort of authenticity; life goes on for these kids. Without exterior influences, they seem to fail to grasp the seriousness of the situation.

The biggest problem for me is the ending. I won't give too much away, just to say that He Who Walks Behind the Rows may not be a myth after all. But you'll probably wish he was, once you see the truly epic crappiness of the effects. I know this film was made on a shoestring budget, but come on people... you'll probably have a fit when you see the sacrificial rocket cross - you'll know when you see it. The movie would have been way more interesting on an intellectual level if this harvest deity didn't exist at all. The conclusion is just ridiculous. You know at the end of "Murder She Wrote" episodes, when the crime had been solved and Angela Lansbury would make some sort of stupid joke and everybody would share the fakest laugh imaginable? Yeah. Things get kind of, um, corny. But really... do they not recall that they have a dead kid in the trunk of their car?!?!

I'd still recommend Children of the Corn. It's entertaining in its own way, and it's a welcome break from your run-of-the-mill horror material. Somewhere behind the hammy writing and cheesy effects is a pretty decent movie.

5.9