On a road trip through rural Nebraska, a divorcing couple find an abandoned town to be the home of a cult of children worshiping a bizarre figure that lives in their cornfields and must find a way of stopping the kids from turning them into their next sacrifice.This is a pretty troubling if somewhat watchable effort. One of the better things this gets right is the rather creepy amount of stalking and chasing around the town which helps this one along. The opening attack with the slit-throat recreation of the original as it leads into the encounter with the kids in front of the church is one of the better scenes as the scenes of them being along and feeling watched also gives this one some rather appealing suspenseful nods here and there. There's several other rather intriguing action scenes from the numerous times of the group of kids chasing after the two through town which is a lot of fun by getting some rather fun chasing here that's all the more fun by feature a large amount of suspense and action together. This is repeated in the finale with everyone along in the cornrows with all the supernaturally-powered vines which leads into the sacrifice at the end which really works well and amounts to all that's positive. The flaws, though, are more detrimental in their quality than quantity since there's not much but it does have very damaging ones mostly centered on the couple in the beginning. They're constant arguing over everything gets old quickly, as the physical and verbal abuse of them arguing over everything really strains credibility that these are supposedly the heroes. This is certainly not heroic behavior and to do it is really troubling by making the leads so irritating and annoying when we get introduced to them. Another big point here is the rather maddening and delusional religious banter throughout here, which are so hackneyed and moronic that it's not only impossible to take seriously but also rather curious as for why anyone would join up with their crusade which is a major testament to the grand amount of nonsense uttered here. The other it of contention is the point of including the flashback to Vietnam which is plain confusing and doesn't accomplish anything, though this isn't as bad as the other flaws. Overall, these are the ones that lower this version.Rated R: Graphic Violence, Language, Brief Nudity, a sex scene and continuous threatening situations toward children.

This movie just fell flat. Although, it does resemble the Stephen King short story more than the 1984 original, especially the ending, it is not it's equal in overall quality and creepiness. Peter Horton and Linda Hamilton put in Oscar worthy performances when compared to their counterparts here. The couple in this film have no on screen chemistry whatsoever, even for playing a couple with marital problems.The real difference between this film and the 1984 original, however, is with the children themselves. Courtney Gains and John Franklin became the gold standard for creepiness under the age of 18 when the original was released. Their mere presence on screen was enough to disturb, even before a word of old testament chanting was uttered. The children in this film are, in comparison, about as scary as parakeet. They invoke no sense of dread and look completely harmless.Perhaps the problem with this film, as well as the 1984 version, is that it is based on a short story. The tale is one of Stephen King's most disturbing and horrific. The images stay with the reader long after the short story is completed. However, there simply is not enough material to support a feature film. To get to the length of an average film, the 1984 original and this version added quite a bit of material which, honestly, watered down the original source material. The story would be better served in an anthology based film such as "Creepshow" or "Tales From the Darkside," where the source material could be given it's just due without a bunch of fluff used to lengthen the story to an hour and a half.

Of all the Stephen King books and films, I find the movie Children of the Corn to be about the most interesting. As a fan of horror movies, I think films with children as villains seem to work for me. Poltergeist and Insidious are two quality horror movies that involve children and families. Village of the Damned was another and this spawned others. Children of the Corn is one of the most interesting of these films because of it's originality, atmosphere and it involved many kids, not just one. This series had some sequels with the first one coming out in 1984 with mixed reviews. The most recent in the series was a remake on the Syfy Channel in 2009 eight years after the last one.This remake uses most of all all the same ideas of the original including corn fields in Nebraska and kids with religious views who have killed their parents and looking to strike again. This time the victims are an argumentative couple who were on their way to a honeymoon trip in California.As a creepy kid film, it is very important that there are good performances from the child actors. Here, I was disappointed in the child characters. Other than the Isaac character (Preston Bailey) just about every kid plays their part like extras. At the same time, these characters are not creepy and don't work well as villains.Even though you could pick at it a little and get maybe something, there isn't much of a plot here. I do like the leads of David Anders and Kandyse McClure but they aren't given much to do and they really mope around a lot. There are some interesting sets here but the kill scenes are not particularly good. There are some beneath the surface ideas that do come into play here. and these include the idea of race, spiritual aspects of the corn and religious overtones throughout.Of course you can't take any of this story too seriously, but obviously there is no way something like this could happen in our country with our government. A town full of killer kids and young pregnant girls would be responded to quickly by the police and military and would be a CNN headliner for weeks. A minor flaw maybe but still hard to overlook.I found Children of the Corn to be disappointing and a movie with an hour and half plot that ran too long at two hours. This is a TV film that feels like a tornado stringing things and ideas around with no purpose and really just wasting our time.

If I knew that Children of the Corn was going to be a TV movie then I wouldn't of bothered recording it on Film4. There was a reason why I hadn't heard of the remake and it was because it was a flippin' TV movie and TV movie's are hugely restricted compared to a large film production. The film starts off with intrigue, with a fantastic ominous atmosphere with the couple discovering the derelict town. It's all relatively gripping until the children eventually come out. The idea is brilliant and it should be very scary, and maybe it would be if the kids were less verbal. No one can take it seriously when a boy that looks about four is giving spouting crazy religious talk and giving orders to a bunch of kids who look much older than him. Once the kids appear on the scene it quickly becomes tiresome with a seemingly never-ending chase scene in the corn field that has virtually no suspense. The two victims are people who you can't care for too. The woman is incredibly over-the-top annoying and a complete bully to her husband, constantly giving callous jibes about his time in Vietnam. Whereas the husband constantly makes idiotic decisions. There are themes that could've been expressed as effectively as the brilliant 2008 horror "The Children" but in the end this turns into a poorly directed and scripted mess. Hopefully the original is miles better!