ChildrenoftheCornRevelation

Children of the Corn Revelation (2001)

Damn it they made a lot of these movies. Thankfully this was the last sequel to the Children of the Corn… Oh wait never mind they made another one that came out this year. Damn it.

This time around we follow a woman named Jamie that has lost touch with her grandmother. It seems the elderly lady sold her house and moved to an old tenement building. When Jamie shows up at the new building she finds the tenants a strange bunch and creepy children running around. Turns out that her grandmother was one of the original children of the corn (though now the events take place in the ‘40s) and they have called her back to them. As tenants disappear Jamie finally figures out that some supernatural badness is going down. But by then is it too late for her to get out of the building?

This probably isn’t the worst of the sequels, but it might be the most boring. We don't get that much of the creepy kids which I found surprising and disappointing. I mean how hard can it be to screw that part of a Children of the Corn flick? The first word in the title is Children! The story spends most of it’s time following Jamie around. When the kids are on screen doing their murderous deeds the movie picks up a bit. But again we don’t get enough of this. When it focuses on Jamie I was bored to tears. Nothing interesting happens at all.

In addition to Jamie we also get a couple of throwaway characters like the tenants, the cop, and the priest. The tenants are cutout characters like a survivalist, a creep in a wheelchair, a stoner, and a stripper. The movie makes no effort to develop them much. They are here to get killed and that is pretty much it. I suppose that is okay because they at least serve a purpose. I’m not sure why either the cop or priest are in the movie. Though the cop does show up at the end to save the day. The priest, played by Michael Ironside, is hardly in the movie and doesn’t serve any purpose. Since Ironside is by far the best actor in the movie this is really frustrating.

The movie crawls along for it’s 82-minute runtime and then the building explodes after our characters make a narrow escape. Along the way nothing interesting happens at all! No tension or scares. The kills are all lame and mostly off screen. I mean a cornstalk attacking a naked stripper sounds like it could be fun, right? Well it isn’t. Children of the Corn Revelation also suffers from some awful CGI effects. Really if you have to CGI the flames from a burning building into your scenes then perhaps you shouldn’t have filmed that sequence at all.

If you can tell yet this movie really annoyed me. In spite of how dumb some of the other sequels have been I’ve normally found something redeeming about them. I had thought that at least I’d dig Michael Ironside in this one. But this movie manages to misfire on anything that might have made it fun. Oh and forget what I said earlier, this is the worst sequel in the series. So yeah I’d skip this one if I were you. That is unless you are looking for a cure for your insomnia.

½ out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer