Rylstone, Nebraska. A once-proud farming town faces new challenges now that their fields have been stripped of nutrients from the prolonged use of pesticides and their corn is dying, shedding toxic spores into the air as they decay. Boleyn (Elena Kampouris), an aspiring botanist, is getting ready to leave for college with promises to return to save the corn, but when Eden (Kate Moyer) organizes a rebellion with all of the kids in town against the adults, there may not be a Rylstone for Boleyn to return to. 

Kurt Wimmer writes and directs the twelfth adaptation and what he is calling a reboot of the classic Stephen King short story The Children of the Corn that briefly hit cinemas through RJLE Films before its release on Shudder. The 93-minute film offers little to audiences in its final form, but what is most frustrating about the endeavor is that the intention is clear, it just is not acted upon. Wimer is interested in addressing many social topics, something horror has been used for since its very beginnings, but he caves to the temptation of making blockbuster finales that, while not pointing the finger of blame at the VFX artists who undoubtedly worked long hours to hit their deadlines, simply did not have the budget to support, visually, what Wimmer was after. What results is the one-two punch of a story that has lost its way and visuals that leave much to be desired. 

The characters of the film can be divided into three factions; those that follow Bo, those that follow Eden, and the adults in town which can again be split down further into those who agree with Bo’s father Robert (Callan Mulvey) and want to take the government subsidy for their land or those who agree with Pastor Penny (Bruce Spence) that the blight which plagues their corn is a result of their sinful nature. The residents are quick to reject the Pastor’s claims, and while the influence of religion is a core element of King’s original story, its inclusion in this latest version seems more out of obligation than Wimmer’s desire to plumb the depths of this particular theme. The 1984 Fritz Kiersch-directed original work is full of campy elements that make it harder to call a “sacred text” as other initial entries into continually re-booted and re-imagined horror franchises, so it seems odd that Wimmer would even bother introducing this point of view since he has no desire to interrogate it beyond its mere existence and turns this morality tale about the dangers of the weaponization of organized religion into a schlocky creature feature.  

Following Bo, we are introduced to her younger brother, Cecil (Jayden McGinlay), a shy boy who is resentful that his sister – and only friend in town – is leaving him. We also meet Calver (Joe Klocek), one of the older youths in the neighborhood whose family has been devastated by the loss of a viable harvest and is on the cusp of falling into the drug trade; another plot line that is introduced but ultimately leads nowhere.  Kampouris is tasked with a lot of clucky, reactionary dialogue, and while she is the main protagonist in Children of the Corn, her performance will not be remembered in the austere and hallowed halls of Scream Queen history. The script does her no favors, often setting up details and plot points that are left hanging so she is unable to really build a character that would make sense as the film travels from one scene to the next. 

Her struggle is only amplified by the muddied motivations of the children who are following Eden. Wimmer’s biggest philosophical dilemma is the pitting of Bo against Eden; both youths who feel let down by the adults and have similar end goals of saving the crops but go about it in two vastly different ways. Bo wants to learn how to work with and save the crops, whereas Eden is much more vengeful in her approach and wants to punish the adults and use their bodies to feed the corn and therefore give strength to He Who Walks, the entity which saved her some years prior when she survived a mass killing at her daycare. While Children of the Corn was produced in 2020 and shelved, it still seems like irresponsible storytelling to use a mass-casualty event at a daycare as the opening set piece. Though Wimmer opts for toxic gas instead of a gun, the script is far too blunt and apathetic in how it handles this idea of the youngest in society being hurt by and eventually inheriting a world that is increasingly damaged by its stewards. Where Kiersch used King’s story to examine how religious sects and extremism can infect and poison people from the inside through fear and fanatic indoctrination, Wimmer had a chance to realign that story with our modern concerns such as rampant gun violence, climate change, and unfortunately, still, propaganda, be it religious or political in nature, but ultimately does nothing with the platform; not even create a decent entry into the storied franchise. 

But to return from this digression, the biggest flaw in the first half of the film is the mismanaged conflict between Bo and Eden. Both working towards similar goals the conflict devolves in standard B-movie monster mechanics even though it set itself up to be a great allegory for generational shifts in how we think about, handle, and prioritize parts of our daily lives. There is no learning to live together, and while given our current tiptoeing towards fascism maybe that across-the-aisle ideal is a thing of the past, but to see the groundwork get laid and then totally ignored is frustrating, to say the least. 

And then there is Eden herself, a vengeful young girl with a sinister nature about her and all the other children fall in line behind her; the self-appointed Red Queen of their juvenile court. The problem here does not lie in Moyer’s performance which is rigid at best, but that comes out of Wimmer’s direction more than anything. His director’s notes can be read by audiences watching any member of the cast at work as they were clearly telegraphed to just feel sad or to feel angry, to walk to this mark and make this gesture and feel this way about things without any thought or care about motivation or craft. The cast, then, acts as robots, and it is the unfortunate truth for Moyer that she shoulders much of the film given the arc of the plot and receives such cumbersome guidance. It makes for an uncomfortable watch as everyone goes through the motions, but it is hard to blame the cast when everyone is seemingly affected the same way. It really comes down to micromanaging at the directorial level. 

Kimmer’s re-boot of the fraught franchise fits well into the troubled history these stories often face when stretched to feature length. Sacrificing the social commentary for cheap tricks and scares, this latest reiteration is a real mess. The final set piece is telegraphed within the first ten minutes even if you are not trying to get ahead of the script, and the transformation of a story about the dangers of influence into one that relies on a corn stalk monster and turns a six-year-old girl into a Terminator-styled foe is not just a fundamental misunderstanding, and disrespect towards, the source material, but so far from left field that it just makes no sense whatsoever. He sets things up that are never paid off, and while Kimmer is clearly very protective of his vision for the film given how uniformly awkward everyone’s performance comes across on screen, it is a real shame that his vision is one that is so nonsensical and at times, downright irresponsible, that Children of the Corn offers audiences little to grasp on in terms of enjoyment and leaves them only with groans. If this is the direction in which we are headed, it is time to let this franchise lay fallow for a while.