Children of the Corn (2009)

Children of the Corn (2009)

The film itself was directed by Donald P. Borchers who also ended up taking Stephen King’s original short story to adapt into the screenplay that produced this wreck of a film. Children of the Corn is Borcher’s third time behind the director’s chair but from his first time having worked with horror as he has worked as both crew and producer on a large amount of horror films in the past including a few movies you may have heard of (and loved or hated) such as Leprechaun 2, Highlander 2, The Fog, and a personal favorite of mine – The Howling. Did I mention he was also one of the producers on the original 1984 release?

The 2009 release of the classic Stephen King’s Children of the Corn should have taken a few queues of the 1984 release that had come before it. This movie trumps almost every other re-make that had come out in 2009 in teaching the lesson of what not to do while re-making a classic horror film. I’m actually shocked it came out as bad as it did with how easy of a concept the film actually has but it seemed that everything they could do to make it wrong was what they went with for the story. With Borchers past experience in the horror genre I really have to question how this film turned out as it did. Even the actors felt underused as the film went out.

We open the film with Burton Stanton (an actor you will easily recognize from a slew of television shows) and his wife Vicki (Kandyse McClure of Battlestar Galactica fame) are driving across country and it’s this initial scene that blows the movie as Vicki is really just more cruel than necessary and doesn’t seem to play the part right. The problem is after Battlestar you know Kandyse has the acting chops she just doesn’t seem to come off as believable hateful as she is supposed to be in this film. When the couple finally hit a child in the car and have to find a town they come across a nearly deserted city and find it full of only children with Issac (Preston Bailey who ends up playing Cody on Dexter and Nicholas in the 2010 remake of The Crazies) in charge.

For those that don’t know the basis of the plot, the children have taken over the city killing all of the adults and using them as sacrifices to a creature that lives in the cornfield whom they worship as a God. The big bonus of being able to see what is ruling these children’s lives never happens as there is no payoff that shows what it is and the ending felt both rushed and unnatural with how Burton falls into having flashbacks that overlay the horror he is experiencing.

ScyFy has put together some impressive re-makes in the past. Their production value on the Dune (yes I know not horror) miniseries comes to mind. However I will quickly admit that all I am doing right now is looking forward to the Dimension Films re-make that will be coming out in the near future to wipe this abomination out of my memory. With being involved in the original release of this film I don’t quite know how Borchers was able to steer this in such a wrong direction.