To answer yesterday's question proposed towards the end of the reviews:
Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering (woop woop?) is a first in this series, as it shares no history or connections with prior installments in this franchise. This time, it focuses on a young woman returning to her small-town home in Grand Island, Nebraska to watch over her agoraphobic mother (genre veteran Karen Black). The kids all over town suddenly start getting sick and people have dreams of an adolescent preacher with a burned face harassing them and...man I'm tired of this already. Supposedly, there is a deleted scene on physical releases of the film which does allude to "He Who Walks Behind the Rows," but it was cut for reasons that I'm still uncertain of. Whether that scene remained intact or not, it is highly doubtful that it would have improved the quality of Part IV. I mean, when your movie opens on a goddamn dream sequence, you are usually asking for trouble. What's worse is how MANY are scattered throughout its entirety (one scene contains a nightmare within a nightmare). It's a scare tactic that drives me absolutely bonkers, and more often than not works only if your film steers more towards the comedic side of things. Funny this movie is not though.
Something I forgot to mention in my prior review for Urban Harvest was the (very) brief film debut of Charlize Theron. She's uncredited and in the film for approximately ten seconds or so, but it counts. The reason why I'm bringing that up this time around is because this also serves as a first for another respected actress: it's the first time that celebrated performer Naomi Watts receives top billing in a film. She is doing the best that she can to make this work, but unfortunately the bland script (seems to be a common problem with these sequels) just feels like a dumbed down version of A Nightmare on Elm Street mixed with elements from Village of the Damned. There is a small chance such a concept as that could have worked were people allowed time to tweak and rewrite some parts, but it just kind of crumbles underneath the weight of so many stupider elements.
This entry in the Children of the Corn series really wishes it could stand alongside with unfairly maligned "sequels" like Halloween III: Season of the Witch, but it just can't seem to do anything right. Yes, there are two good kills to be found (corn scythe through the head and bisection via hospital gurney), but it is such a slog to get through. If you pass by this on MAX, Hulu, or Amazon Prime Video, just keep on moving.
Don't stop on this one though. It's arguably just as foul as Part IV.
Unlike its predecessor, Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror IS connected to the first three films, as a group of not-teenagers come across an eccentric small town and run afoul of a crazed little asshole (this time Adam Wylie of Picket Fences and Hey Arnold! fame) who worships He Whose Name I'm Tired of Typing Out. Weird shit and bad acting commence.
Oddly enough, this is the first sequel I've seen to date where I recognized WAY too many of the on-screen performers. We've got Alexis Arquette (Bride of Chucky, Pulp Fiction), Fred Williamson (Black Caesar, From Dusk till Dawn), David Carradine (Kung Fu, Kill Bill), and Kane Hodder (Friday the 13th Parts 7-10, Hatchet). There's also a more prominent actress that I'll address further down. Everyone is doing their best to pretend that they're not just teenagers, but likeable (spoilers: neither works). Fields of Terror is also the first Children of the Corn sequel released during the post-Scream slasher/horror revival that swept the nation, but it lacks any of the substance or fun that made even any of those movies so respected (I doubt you could have paid Kevin Williamson enough to write this). If Scream or I Know What You Did Last Summer were Nirvana and Soundgarden, this is Puddle of Mudd. Or Lifehouse.
Fun (albeit sad) fact about Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror: this marks the film debut of yet another prolific actress (this time Eva Mendes), and she was so appalled by her performance in this that she hired an acting coach almost immediately afterwards. Say what you will about her choice in projects after this dropped, but even the smelliest of cinematic trash piles like The Spirit or Ghost Rider are FAR superior to this piece of junk. I can't really be terribly angry about her performance though, as every single character in this is either a douchebag, boring, or utterly moronic. Thankfully the film's running time is only about eighty minutes, so you don't have to spend an exorbitant amount of time with them.
I'm not sure what else I can say about these flicks. They're getting progressively stupider and duller. I'm kind of stunned that this was written and directed by Ethan Wiley, who also wrote & directed the superbly underrated House II: The Second Story (still waiting on a Dogapillar plush guys!). Just go seek that out instead and let this burn in the fields.
While we're still on the topic of surprisingly competent names being attached to these cinematic abortions, let's jump right into Children of the Corn 666: Isaac's Return. This time we're right back in Gatlin, as we follow young woman Hannah (played by Get Real's Natalie Ramsey) and her decision to go back to the town she was smuggled out of when she was an infant before the murders began. Despite her repeatedly running into unwelcoming individuals EVERYWHERE in this town, she still insists that she must find her birth mother. Soon, we see the return of Isaac from the very first Corn flick (played by a returning John Franklin), an embarrassing waste of Nancy Allen, and a whole lot of nonsense involving evil sheriffs, Stacy Keach, and cheap jump scares.
This was perhaps the most frustrating and boring of these films to date, as there are a multitude of things that could have been fixed in order to make this mildly watchable. For starters, please don't make your main character this idiotic. I know that it's an unspoken rule of horror cinema that your protagonist will make the occasional baffling decision, but from the very beginning, the character of Hannah is irrationally stupid and ignores literally EVERY warning sign before her (this includes every single person she comes into contact with being either a creep or crazed). I'm fairly certain that the cast of Scary Movie were more intelligent. As for her insistence of wanting to desperately discover who her mom was or what she did? Well, I would like to propose that both Ancestry.com and Google Search were founded prior to the canonical events in this. Plus, the Gatlin murders and whatnot are still out there for the world to read about. Christ on a kernel.
Perhaps the biggest waste of potential in this comes from what would most likely catch the attention of experienced genre fans: the return of Isaac, who despite being enveloped by the same stuff that messed up William Hurt during the end of Altered States, was apparently in a coma after the events in Part 1. John Franklin was debatably the best part of the first Children of the Corn, and he also co-writes the script for Part 6. Unfortunately, he is barely utilized during its short running time (this is one of those cases where I would've welcomed a performer inserting themselves into the movie as often as they could) and the inclusion of the character ultimately just adds to the pointless nature of the whole shebang. It's a similar problem I had with 2018's The Predator, wherein they introduce a character that is supposed to be the offspring of Gary Busey's character from Predator 2 (he's even played by Jake, Gary's actual son). It adds nothing to the film. Also, there's the sudden revelation that Isaac has a child now. Admittedly, I know very little about what can be done with a body while its comatose, but I'm fairly certain that.... hold up, wasn't he still a kid when?...And his own child is a teenager now? I'm so perplexed and angry and grossed out. Just.....no. No. No. No. No.
*sigh* Okay, I'm vetoing the decision to finish this series (at least for now). These are starting to kill whatever brain cells I have left.
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