Horror Movie Review: Children of the Corn: Revelation (2001)

Welcome to the 7th instalment of the Children of the Corn franchise, a series of movies that should never have reached this number. After seeing number 6 I never expected to watch another Children of the Corn movie ever again mainly because I figured they wouldn’t make anymore…I was wrong.

Children of the Corn: Revelation wisely drops the number 7. If you’re trying to shake off a reputation then the last thing you want to do is remind viewers that you’re the 7th in the series of mostly bad movies.

A straight to video job, COTC: Revelation story begins with some old lady having a bad dream in a bed. There are flames, corn & children…she wakes up & goes running out of her house. She is the grandmother of Jamie who is on route to visit her after not getting a returned call in over a week. When she arrives she finds her grandmother’s apartment block (due to be demolished soon) is right next to a cornfield & that she is missing.

After getting spooked by 2 kids who just stand & stare she goes to the police to report her missing, they have very little interest in looking for her. Staying at her grandmother’s apartment she meets some of the blocks other residents & local shopkeepers while getting spooked by kids a lot. She also runs into a mysterious priest (Michael Ironside!) who seems to be in the know.

A nice dream sequence fills in what happened to her Gran (she died).

After going to the police again & teaming up with the hot, young detective she uncovers her grandmother’s hidden past…that she was part of a religious cult of kids. When the police tried to intervene, the leader of the cult started a fire killing all the kids inside a large marquee. Everyone except Jamie’s grandmother…

It seems the dead kids have found a way back…by killing the residents of the apartment block & offering their bodies to ‘he who walks behind the rows’ they get to come back. One by one the residents start to get picked off as Jamie tries to understand what is going on.

Eventually once the entire block has been picked off except Jamie she finally gets filled in with the Children of the Corn back story (Gatlin & he who walks behind the rows) before facing off against the resurrected kids.

God…this movie sucked….

It’s not the worst Children of the Corn movie but it’s pretty close to it. It at least makes a valiant effort in trying to connect with the COTC history. The corn is easy, the brief reference to ‘he who walks behind the rows’, the similarities between the boy preacher of this movie & the ones from the previous & the name-dropping of the Gatlin incident are all references to keep a regular watcher like me from dismissing this as Children of the Corn movie completely.

However where this movie fits in the timeline is anyone’s guess.

A lot of the actors are pretty decent even if their on-screen time is brief. Some are so brief that they are clearly only included so they can be killed shortly afterwards. There is the pothead landlord who gets thrown off the roof, the angry wheelchair bound neighbour who gets pushed down the stairs, the gun-toting military man who dies of a heart-attack after getting spooked & the stripper who gets drowned in her bath.

She has to get special mention though as at first she seemed to have a little bit more character development then the rest but it quickly becomes apparent that she’s only in it to flash her tits. I was sad when she died….

There isn’t much gore & most blood seems to come from scenes involving corn.

Early on it is really obvious where the movie is going & I held out hope for a really good payoff but sadly it doesn’t even get close. In fact the ending is too long, very confusing (the way the kids act & why they want Jamie to join them) & is far too nice.

The use of special effects to show corn growing quickly to trap Jamie is so bad that it’s laughable, why bother? Why not just imply its happening off screen or something with sounds & her screaming? Either way it couldn’t have saved an ending that I just wanted to end.

I should probably stop subjecting myself to Children of the Corn movies but each time I hold out hope that something good will come about this time. It rarely does (except COTC 4 which was great)….

Guess what? I’ve just seen there is a Children of the Corn 8….