Children of the Corn Movies Ranked
3. Children of the Corn: Revelation (2001)
The seventh film in the franchise sheds its entire past, reworking the concept virtually from the ground up.
Investigating the disappearance of her grandmother, Jamie Lowell finds the run-down condominium her grandmother lives in overrun by strange children, ghostly happenings, and a feeling of overall unease. Also, there’s corn.
Revelation is not a great movie, but it at least attempts to have some kind of atmosphere. It takes a much more enigmatic approach for the most part, the effects of Ringu and other ghost films beginning to seep from Asian nations into the western consciousness here, from the tone to even some of the camerawork. That should be rightly praised. And yet Revelation is still dumb, characters are still just there to die, and most of the child actors, despite cleverly reducing much of their screen-time to silent Kubrick stares, don’t chill as much as they should.
It’s a shame. There’s something half interesting in it. Revelation isn’t completely awful.
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2. Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest (1995)
Urban Harvest gets the silver medal for a few reasons, the main one being the transplanting of rural folk horror to the big cities.
Two of the surviving Gatlin kids are adopted into a new family in the city, bringing with them corn from home, the power of the cult. The cycle begins again in the fields of steel and glass.
It’s not a horrible film, and the switch up of bringing rurality to the city, instead of the usual city folk to the countryside to be massacred, is an interesting reversal of the normal trend. Additionally, the cliffhanger of the final scenes (which the following films don’t pay off) is good.
However, the kills are awful and the final scene is simply disastrous. Really, a barbie doll used for your stop motion monster killing? In the 30s they had no choice with King Kong, but you did!
Still, it’s half-solid.
1. Children of the Corn (1984)
The original Children of the Corn still has the power to be a fairly good, atmospheric and creepy thriller.
One Sunday afternoon, all the kids of Gatlin suddenly turn, murdering all the adults in town. Three years later, pre-Terminator Linda Hamilton and her boyfriend stumble into town, where the kids are under the rule of the young preacher Isaac, his violent, red-haired henchman Malachi, and bow before the mysterious presence of He Who Walks Behind The Rows.
It’s not perfect, but what works is that it takes its relative time. It manages to have atmosphere, the dust and dirt and desolation seeping into the bones. It’s the relative simplicity of it that works. The performances of John Franklin as Isaac, and Courtney Gains as Malachi, are fantastic, and they steal every scene they’re in. It’s a statement that perhaps the enduring legacy of the whole franchise is Gains’ hair, blowing in the wind, a sickle raised above his head, commanding an army of children to hunt down and kill.
We must admit to ourselves however, that despite the nostalgia, the film falls down in the final act.
The lightning effects are awful (welcome to the 80s), the supernatural reveal destroys any mystery, and when you’ve got a film based around kids, their acting is always going to be temperamental at best. A decent and fun time, but never the full five stars.
Still, Children of the Corn is the best of the franchise by far, and essential watching for any cult horror fan.
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Do you have any Children of the Corn movies that you’ve developed a fondness for over the years? Are you still avoiding these movies like the plague? Let us know in the comments below, and be sure to follow @thefilmagazine on Facebook and Twitter for more insightful movie lists.
