Having just watched the original, I decided to watch the remake solely on the premise that there was no way in hell the remake could be as bad as the original. I was right, as is usually the case, but only just barely. Nowhere on the box does this say this is a Syfy movie… but that’s exactly what it is… and that should tell you something about the film. While the Children of the Corn remake can be considered light years better than most Syfy flicks, it still suffers from shitty writing and even worse casting… two Syfy staples since the disreputable cable network starting making its own movies.

The story this time around is a little different, which I sort of appreciate. Now if the stuff they had done actually improved the story, that would have been even better. Instead, they just transferred one turd out and replaced it with another turd. Instead of the bland couple traveling across the U.S., we have a mind-crushingly annoying couple doing the same. They run into a kid, and this leads them to search for a phone in the nearest town. Of course, they discover a group of cultists, here led by an annoying little bastard that preaches nonstop in his annoying kid voice. The annoying wife is killed and the husband, a Vietnam vet unsurprisingly, goes all crazy and tries to kill some kids. Then he spends a good fifteen to twenty minutes running through corn while we are privy to the annoying behind the scenes moments of the cult, which basically show them watching some teenagers having sex while they bounce around and hoot and holler like rednecks in a strip club. Then uhh… the movie just kind of ends. Just like that, the nightmare is over.

The Children of the Corn remake is terrible for one major reason, among a host of others. The main characters might just be the most annoying and stupid people ever put on screen. The wife, played by Kandyse McClure, should probably be in a mental ward due to her unnerving mood swings. Of course, matters aren’t helped any by some of the worst overacting I’ve ever seen by McClure. After five minutes you’ll want to jump into your TV just to bitchslap McClure across her talentless face. The husband is the complete polar opposite. Played by David Anders, the husband is ridiculously stupid and dense. Anders portrayal of the character is one-note and brutally weak. On top of all that, the writing is laughably bad.

As far as directing goes, it’s clear that Donald P. Borchers had very little to work with. Borchers does a nice job in a few areas, namely the scenes of violence, but he makes some critically bad decisions. The biggest of which is the oddly uncomfortable sex scene between a couple of children in the movie. It’s unnecessary and Borchers successfully hints at the fact that the kids have sex to keep their numbers up when he shows a pregnant child earlier in the film. That is enough for most audiences, but Borchers goes ahead and shows the scene in question… even if it is distasteful and adds nothing to the movie. Borchers also spends an abnormally long amount of time letting kids talk, which is never a good idea. One kid literally drove me to pulling out my hair as he talked like Elmer Fudd.

The one thing that Borchers does right with the film is the violence. In this effort, he is aided by the usually reliable special effects of Robert Kurtzman’s crew. Children of the Corn has plenty of blood and plenty of violence to go around. Not everything is perfect, but you get what you expect from a contemporary horror movie. If only they had killed more kids, this film would have been even better… not enough to be good, but maybe enough to be laughably bad.

I never wanted a remake of Children of the Corn… no one did, but this one is one of the few remakes that is actually better than the original. Of course, that’s not that difficult of an order to fill. In the end, it’s standard-issue Syfy stuff with an upgrade in special effects and a recognizable title. It’s not good and not worth your time.

Final Synopsis: The Children of the Corn remake is bad… not as bad as the original, but damn close. Don’t even bother with it.

Points Lost: -1 for the kids fucking scene, -1 for terrible acting, -1 for annoying kids, -1 for bad writing in general, -1 for terrible characters, -1 for a shitty ending, -1 for generally sucking

Lesson Learned: Sometimes subtlety is a good thing.

Burning Question: How fucking hard is it to get out of a corn field?

Children of the Corn
3/10

Tags: 2009, corn-o-philia, crazy cult, daniel newman, david anders, donald p. borchers, horror, horror movie, kandyse mcclure, killer kids, latest movie reviews, recent3, zita vass, zita vass boobs, zita vass naked