Review of Children of the Corn (1984) by Jessica P — 03 Feb 2012

In high school, a guy told me that this was the scariest film he had ever seen. Children of the Corn may certainly be a lot of things, but scary definitely isn't one of them.

One of Stephen King's better known short stories, this sees a just pre-Terminator Linda Hamilton and the guy who likes bicycles in Singles take the scenic route of their road trip only to wind up mowing down a stabbed child and ending up in a ghost town where no adults seem to be present and the kids have all gone a bit Lord of the Flies under the leadership of Isaac, a child preacher whom you feel could have all his anger issues solved if only someone could give him a throat sweet.

King movie adaptations are always something of a dodgy prospect. For every Shining, there's a Needful Things and Children of the Corn is towards the lower end of the quality scale. Hamilton and Singles guy play a convincing couple even if they are mind-numbingly stupid, even by horror movie character standards. Out of the kids, the only one who shows any real menace is Courtney Gains' Malachi while mini-me-type devil child Issac is just too scratchy voiced to really get scared of.

The plot continues to evolve into something to do with rituals to a, disappointingly, unseen monster and while the film manages to raise some unintentional smiles and a finale which is entertainingly over the top, you can't get over the feeling that it's all been a bit of a let down.

Of course, most people probably haven't had this sold to them as "the scariest movie ever made" but even if you hadn't, it's hard to imagine anyone finding this anything more than an amusingly below average horror. The only way in which this could be classed as the scariest movie you had ever seen is if this was the only movie you had ever seen.