Children of the Corn (Kurt Wimmer, 2020, USA)

Children of the Corn (2020) is the eleventh feature film adaptation and twelfth adaptation overall of Stephen King's short story "Children of the Corn." This makes it not only the longest-running franchise of any Stephen King property but one of the longest-running horror franchises of all time. That being said, the reputation of the franchise has been tarnished over the years by several subpar films. One hoped that Blumhouse or another enterprising studio would try to turn this around with a reboot that respected the source material while enlivening it. Children of the Corn is not that film, sadly.

Brought to the screen by Kurt Wimmer, scribe of various Hollywood action films, this latest Corn adaptation does not follow any continuity of the prior films (not that there was much, to begin with), but instead starts fresh with a sacrificial murder of adults in a small town in Nebraska. The lone child survivor, a girl named Eden, begins her cult. Meanwhile, an older teenage girl - Boleyn Williams - is preparing to leave the town to go off to college. She becomes our heroin and central adversary to the corn cult. There are also some local politics about getting rid of the corn fields.

The one thing that distinguishes this entry from the rest of the franchise is the representation of "He Who Walks Behind the Rows" as an Alien-style corn creature. This is one of the Corn films that can be properly called a creature feature, along with Urban Harvest (1995). Sadly, the visual effects feel very poor and dated. The premise is not interesting enough to sustain the film and coupled with the poor graphics, we end up getting a retread of many of the standard tropes of prior films. Worth a watch but not highly recommended.

4/10