Children of the Corn (2023)

1/2 Star (out of 4)

Empty Husk

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Without a doubt one of the two or three absolute worst Stephen King movie adaptations, this reboot is so awful on every conceivable level that you probably won't even believe what you're seeing.

As it begins, a boy walks out of a cornfield, enters an orphanage, and begins killing all the adults inside. A botched attempt at a rescue by the police causes the deaths of all the children, except one, Eden (Kate Moyer). Meanwhile, Bo (Elena Kampouris) is planning to leave her small, broken Nebraska hometown of Rylstone to go to college, much to the dismay of her younger brother, Cecil (Jayden McGinlay).

Meanwhile, the townspeople hold a meeting to see what to do about their ruined crops, agreeing to take a subsidy from the government just to survive. But Eden has organized all the children of Rylstone and plans to murder all the adults, and feed them to a being in the cornfield known as He Who Walks. Can anyone stop her?

An astonishing eleventh entry in a series that began with Children of the Corn (1984) and includes many direct-to-video movies, Children of the Corn begs the question: why did anyone bother?

Writer/director Kurt Wimmer (Ultraviolet) has even mostly abandoned King's 1977 short story in favor of some nonsensical mishmash consisting of a muddled environmental message, a cult full of killer kids (with wobbly acting skills), and a bad CG monster.

If the acting is pretty bad, then the terrible screenplay is at least partly to blame; characters often seem to be standing around and waiting for someone to tell them what to do. They never seem to be talking to each other, and then certain lines are overplayed to the point of unintentional comedy.

At least Bruce Spence — best known as the Gyro Captain in the Mad Max movies — is here playing a creepy pastor, providing a few minutes of something to look at.

One thing is for sure: Children of the Corn is not at all scary, not even one niblet.