Review of Children of the Corn (1984) by Jesse O — 11 Oct 2013

And our horror month continues with another slightly below average horror film. I'm having the absolute worst luck picking decent horror movies this month. Anyway, I didn't really like this movie.

It's not bad by any stretch of the imagination, just pretty below average. A large problem is that the movie doesn't really wanna tell you how the children came to be the way they are. Apparently, Stephen King had written a backstory detailing what happened to the kids that made them murder every adult in town.

I thought that would've made for a more interesting movie than what we ended up getting here. However I did think some of the ideas here were cool, Isaac being this preacher that is being told by this 'monster' what to do, and how he lies to the other kids in the village in order to do his bidding.

That was pretty decent, but I don't know, the movie just lacks something. It's not really scary to be honest and it's really not that gory. The movie just relies on the murderous kids to tell its "story".

What I liked about Come Out and Play, another movie with murderous children, is that they were still happy and carefree children. They played, laughed, ran around, etc. They did everything kids do with the one little exception that they were murderous maniacs.

And I think that's infinitely scarier than having mean looking kids, like in this movie. It just looks and feels goofy. The acting is adequate for a horror movie, though I must say that John Franklin, Isaac, was way over-the-top in his delivery.

He had some scenes were he was fine, but the over-the-top scenes certainly take the cake. The movie also has one of the most random endings I've ever seen. After killing Malachi, Isaac, and the monster, I don't even know what it was, Burt, Vicky, and the kids decide to leave for Seattle.

Burt gets in the car and finds out that one of the "kids" had been hiding in there waiting to kill him. He stops her, slams the car door in her face and then the movie just ends. It was so ridiculous, that I couldn't help but laugh.

This movie's not bad, I just think it could've used a little more backstory and more interesting scares rather than just relying on murderous children for its horror.