So we’re two reboots and eleven movies in to the god awful “Children of the Corn” movie series, and the studios simply will not let it die. “Children of the Corn” 2023 stinks of the studio trying its best to retain the IP for the sake of more cheapo sequels down the road. It shows with what is a pointless and painfully dull reboot of the series that features none other than director Kurt “Gunkata” Wimmer slumming it, big time.
Set in a small dying Nebraska town, local farmers are planning to sell their miles of corn maize to land developers. But things become difficulty as young Eden (Kate Moyer) begins to assemble the kids of the town and form a murderous cult that is hell bent on protecting the corn at all costs. Now teenager “Bo” (Elena Kampouris) must hinder their efforts to murder all the town’s adults, and look for a way to end their rampage and destroy the corn rows once and for all. “Children of the Corn” has nothing really to do with the original 1977 short story from Stephen King.
There’s a small town, killer kids, and a lot of corn, but that’s really as far as it goes. The dives in to the occult and this massive powerful cult are painfully under developed and half baked. All the while we run back and forth between characters that have paper thin development and never really get explored beyond one or two brief scenes. Oddly the most under developed characters in the film are the central protagonists, all of whom do nothing but skulk around and react to the carnage. There’s our heroine “Bo” who is a cliché small town girl moving off to the big city, there’s her childhood friend who is being abused by his dad, and her two best friends that really don’t do anything but mope and cry.
A lot of the events that unfold are so inexplicable and poorly written that everything feels so abrupt. The whole “He Who Walks in the Rows” concept isn’t fully fleshed out until the final half hour of the movie, and we don’t get a ton of explanation as to who or what “He Who Walks…” is. The writer also injects environmental themes in to the whole maize and corn landscape, vainly attempting to make the events feel socially relevant. Are the murderous children a product of unnatural chemicals or an unusual fungus destroying their brain activity, or is this whole ordeal a supernatural source? If the latter, what is the supernatural source, exactly?
Why do they introduce “Bo” with a knowledge in microbiology and fungi only for her to do nothing with it? To prove how sloppily put together the script is, there’s even heavy implication of the corn being possessed by witches from the Salem trials. And again, there’s never confirmation of this idea, nor is it ever expanded on. We’re not even entirely sure what is motivating Eden through all of this. Is she possessed? Is she some twisted cult leader? Has she been granted powers? And why her? Eden’s shift in personality is so sudden and it feels rushed; the writer seem to be working more toward racing to the end, rather than merely developing the narrative in a linear fashion.
Much of what unfolds amounts to a lot of unanswered questions and undeveloped plot points, amplified by terrible dialogue and some hammy acting. The only saving grace is Kate Moyer who seems to be having a good time playing the evil Eden. She adds a ton of depth and personality to what could have been a stale villain and I’d love to see her return in some fashion down the road. “Children of the Corn” is an enduring movie series that will sadly keep limping on until the studio gets bored with the property.
In Theaters March 3rd for an 18 day run, and will be available On Demand and Digital March 21st.