Here is a totally unnecessary adaptation of Stephen King’s 1977 short story about killer kids who slaughter all the adults in town as a sacrifice to a pagan corn god. Unbelievably, King’s 10,000-odd word story has now spawned 11 movies, beginning with the 1984 cult classic starring Linda Hamilton. This new one kicks off with the whiff of something interesting: the idea that kids today might want to slit their parents’ throats for leaving the planet in such a mess. But the script is nowhere near clever enough to exploit the juicy potential for social commentary. Instead, it quickly gets silly and unscary.
This version is set in a place called Rylstone, a rusting farming town in Nebraska where genetically modified corn is to blame for years of bad harvests. At a town hall meeting, desperate farmers vote to call it quits: accept a government payoff, bury the corn, leave town. What they’ve failed to notice is the cold emotionless eyes of their own children who’ve been spending an awful lot of time in the fields lately. The ringleader of these junior bad seeds is Eden, a 12-year-old with butter-wouldn’t-melt pigtails (Kate Moyer, doing some effective creepy-kid acting).
The only young person unaffected is Bo (Elena Kampouris), an eco activist about to leave town for university. She wonders if toxins in the fertiliser are causing the little ones to hallucinate. But no: the explanation for their murderous spree is an evil demon festering in the corn fields. God only knows why, but the film-makers decide to actually show the corn monster: half man, half plant, he looks a bit like Stick Man from the Julia Donaldson books, and is about as terrifying.
This is a bloody slasher of a movie but it’s not original or unsettling. What’s missing is the folk horror; other than a symbolic crucifixion or two, there’s none of the Wicker Man vibes of the 1984 original. By comparison this is boring and bland. What a shucker.
• Children of the Corn is released on 31 July on digital platforms.
