MY CALL: Dear Lord, these movies just keep finding ways to be worse than the “worst sequel” that came before it. Don’t watch this drivel! MORE MOVIES LIKE Children of the Corn VII: Children of the Corn (1984)spawned many video-era sequels over the years (1992, 1995, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2001, 2011, 2018) leading to the most recent remake (2020/23). Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice (1992) was dumber but funner, and Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest (1995) seems to follow this yet dumber and yet wildly funner pattern to delightful “bad movie hidden gem” perfection. It’s not totally awful, but I’d skip Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering (1996). However, Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror (1998) and Children of the Corn 666: Isaac’s Return (1999) are both definite hard pass recommendations.
TIMELINE: CotC 1 ended with the cornfields of Gatlin burning with the defeat of an ancient Corn God. But of course, many of Isaac’s still living disciples remained devout to “He who walks behind the rows.” So yeah, sequels. CotC 2 transpired in the week following Vicky and Bert’s escape from the town and Micah is the new child Messiah. Similar to CotC 2, CotC 3 ends when Eli and his corn Bible are destroyed. However, his urban harvest would then be spread around the world in the commodities market. CotC 3 largely ignored the fact that it was a sequel, feeling more like a standalone story. But that doesn’t matter since CotC 4 and CotC 5 likewise ignored all of its predecessors as well, feeling more like stories “based on” CotC. In truth, no CotC sequel acknowledges any other previous sequel except for CotC 2 and CotC 6, which brought Isaac back along with some trumped-up prophecy. They are all either standalone movies of related story content or direct sequels to the original. As far as franchise continuity goes, this is a shame. Since there basically is no continuity at all.
In search of her missing grandmother, Jamie (Claudette Mink; Tamara) visits her apartment in Omaha Nebraska to discover the building has been condemned and is weirdly populated by weird creepy kids. Jamie moves into her grandma’s place during her search. The grandmother’s building address is 666 and the edifice is besieged by overgrown corn… in the middle of the city… how quaint. The kids in this building look like low budget theater ghost kids from a stage play—blank faces and pale. This movie instantly feels regrettably awful.
The tagline for this movie is “the all-new, terror-filled chapter.” Someone should be liable for this injustice in misrepresentation. Director Guy Magar (Retribution) seems to think placing creepy kids in scenes will make the movie for him. It doesn’t. This vapid flick sucks.
The spiderwebs are shiny plastic, no doubt from a Halloween Spirit store. The corn bleeds when you bite into it; there’s a horrendously bad CGI scene of a girl with maggots pouring from her mouth; and corn wreaths on apartment doors seem to harbinger death. The kids throw a guy off the roof and push a man in a wheelchair down the stairs. Frankly, this should have been hilarious. But this was awful.
Jamie’s ‘stripper with a heart of gold’ neighbor (Yan-Kay Crystal Lowe; Black Christmas, Final Destination 3, Wrong Turn 2) flashes the viewers, runs a bath, and is drowned by killer cornstalks (in her bathtub) after a kid drops in some magic corn kernels that act like Jack’s murderous Beanstalk Beans. Michael Ironside (The Vagrant, Prom Night II, Still/Born, Extraterrestrial, Scanners, Turbo Kid) is in this movie and I still don’t care! Again, this movie is awful.
Turns out her grandmother survived an evangelical tent fire as a child. It was a religious cult congregation of kids led by a boy preacher—unfortunately, his name is not Isaac. Clearly, this movie is in no way a sequel. Rather this is another reimagining (and squandering) of King’s classic and beloved source material. And it sucks for it.
Truly terribly executed is the arrival (out of nowhere) of Job, the boy preacher. Even at first glance I cannot take this kid seriously. But really, none of these creepy kid actors are carrying their weight for convincingly creepy kid performances. It’s all garbage.
The finale of this drivel is just a bunch of burnt-faced kids chasing Jamie around the building. An ineptly managed neighborhood haunted house attraction would be far more effective than this movie. Corn attacks her, it bleeds when cut, and this leads to nothing interesting. Then the building explodes, and no one cares. The evil corn creatures from CotC 3 really could have breathed some life into this limp finale. But alas, I guess the best of these sequels remain in Corn Hell with He Who Walks Behind the Rows. This is so bad.