Children of the Corn (1984) - film review

Accompanied by his girlfriend Vicky, Burt is on his way to Seattle to take up his new post as a physician.   Whilst driving down a deserted road bordered by cornfields, Burt knocks down a child who is standing motionless in the middle of the road.  To his surprise, the child has recently had his throat cut and must have been dead before the car hit him.   The couple head off to the nearby town of Gatlin to notify the authorities of the boy’s death only to find that the whole town appears to be deserted.  In fact, the entire adult population of the town was murdered three years previously by their children, who had fallen under the influence of a demonic force lying beneath the cornfields.    The children are aware of Bert and Vicky’s arrival and are awaiting the command from their leader Isaac to capture them and sacrifice them to their god...

Whilst it is not held in particularly high esteem amongst horror aficionados, Children of the Corn is a creepy little thriller which does capture the essence of the Stephen King story that inspired it.  The budgetary limitations are all too evident (most noticeably in the now dated special effects) but lack of money did not prevent director Fritz Kiersch from crafting an eerie tale of demonic possession which is sustained by a distinctly unsettling atmosphere.  If a little more money had been thrown at it and more effort gone into the script, this could have been quite a remarkable horror film, a chilling hybrid of the slasher and possession sub-genres.  As it is, the film was ill-received by the critics (many of whom objected to the portrayal of children as knife-wielding killers) but performed remarkably well at the box office.  The film was enough of a hit to lead to six sequels (of rapidly diminishing quality) and a television remake in 2009.

© Steve Chandler 2010

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