Hamilton HalloWatch: Children of the Corn (1984)

Watched:  10/13/2024

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Fritz Kiersh

This movie is boring.  

That's my memory of Children of the Corn (1984) from watching it in high school, and it's how I feel now.  And so I watched it again thinking - hey, I barely remember it and it seems like it should be exciting.  People love this movie!  

It's based on a short story by King - that I never read - and I guess they needed a lot of filler.  It's mostly just Peter Horton and Hamilton wandering around so the characters can see what we already know.  Hamilton existing so Horton can explain what is happening.

That's terrible structure.  There's no suspense - we don't piece things together with the characters.  Instead, we're supposed to feel anxiety that they might get killed, which we know they won't until the last minute, if it's that kind of movie that decides we see the protagonists die at the end (it is not.  That's other folk-horror movies like Wicker Man).

The big twist is that there's a Lovecraftian horror living in the fields of corn, and - to be honest - that feels like a let-down rather than just insane Bible-thumping kids, while also feeling like a Disney Halloween movie gone off the rails.

People love this movie, but I think that's Gen-X Space Jam Fallacy.  As a kid - this is a pretty decent "my first Rated-R movie" horror as it's not exactly shocking, particularly bloody or scary.  But it does contain the idea that you, a powerless kid, could get wrapped up in a scary new dynamic under the Isaac's and Malachi's you know are out there.  As an adult, you can only think "these stupid kids would be dead inside a week when they realized they don't know how to eat on their own, what to do when they're sick, or when the snow comes down and there's no fuel.".

Also - surely someone would notice an entire town of people just stopped showing up.

Which is why Children of the Corn probably works as a short story, but not as a movie that gives you time to think about these things.

What it does have is Linda Hamilton.

the very corniness of this movie may be her undoing

Unfortunately, this is pre-James Cameron Linda Hamilton, so she's playing "lady/ girl" in this movie, and just has "victim/ hostage" written all over her as soon as the story really kicks in.  If I praised M3GAN for not shying away from a woman who is a childless robot-lady, then this movie is the opposite.  Hamilton is basically spending the whole movie convincing her already locked-in doctor boyfriend that he should be *more* her boyfriend.  And when she meets kids, you can hear the warming of her ovaries as she leaps into action being there for potentially murderous children.

Still, we're never mad about Linda Hamilton showing up.

The one line that made my ears perk up was Peter Horton rightfully pointing out that religion isn't bunk, but any religion that's devoid of love is a terrible idea.  Like... deep thoughts in the middle of a pretty silly movie.

Whether I like this movie or not, the legacy of this movie is probably pretty deep.  Us city-folk do not like driving through big empty places with the occasional human dotting the landscape, and this movie does not help (nor does getting stink-eye at the gas station in the middle of nowhere).  But it also maybe helped set the table not just for the ten sequels of this movie, but a lot of "city people are terrified of the country" movies that litter our horror movie landscape.