Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice (1993)

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Fresh and Exciting

Boring

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

This film follows directly on from where the first CHILDREN OF THE CORN left off. In the opening moments, we see police discovering all the remains of the dead adults which is quite a disturbing image - these grey corpses look as lifelike as possible. It's the same with the scene in a cornfield where a couple discover even more strewn human remains scattered around. The special effects are good, definitely, but the plot? Oh dear.Essentially, it's just a remake of the first film but with better special effects and less suspense/atmosphere. Unfortunately for us, the special effects are indeed the only things which have improved, for the first film had superior acting as well. This cast look like they have walked straight out of a television movie - the father and son heroes also have an ongoing feud, which culminates in some sappy sentimentalising at the end of the film where they make up - as if we couldn't guess. It's true, the acting is extremely poor in this film, nobody is remotely realistic and the camera is more interested in lingering on the physiques of the female characters rather than exploring their, well, characters.Another fault lies in that they had to add a totally irrelevant subplot in - something about growing toxic mould on the corn and selling it - which almost ruins the whole story. This is about supernatural stuff, not some underground crime scheme. It's just cliché after cliché - a Native American turns up, and, surprise, surprise, talks about mankind harming Mother Nature and the rest. We've heard it all before, pal, and we're just not interested. They try to make some scenes spooky but the child actors are poor and unrealistic - especially the lead, who is no match for Isaac from the first film.And so, as I am finding with so many '90s horror movies, the special effects are the only worthwhile things in the whole film. There is a high gore level here, and the violence is surprisingly sadistic - witness one old man being stabbed to death with needles in his legs. Of course, if we cared about the characters these gory moments might have been powerful and moving, but as it is they're just wince inducing. One man bleeds spontaneously as a kid stabs a wooden effigy of him in the film's bloodiest moment, and another guy has a piece of corn impale his throat (as ridiculous on screen as it sounds here). The biggest disappointment, though, is the boring, predictable ending where we don't even get to see the monster (only some rip-off PREDATOR POV shots). Just some people fighting and burning. Was this the end of the franchise? Well, maybe it should have been, but CHILDREN OF THE CORN III: URBAN HARVEST followed shortly afterwards.

The movie begins in Gatlin where it's revealed to police and the media that adults in the town are all dead at the hands of children. This film was made eight years after the first, but we are led to believe it takes place mere days after Linda Hamilton survived the vicious attack. So with all the parents dead, there are a lot of kids without anyone to look after them. To help out the kids that didn't participate in the murders, the neighbouring town of Hemingford offers to foster some of them. We are then introduced to a tabloid reporter John Garrett and his son Danny who do not get along. John is travelling to Hemingford to get a scoop on the story of the murders. They end up staying at a bed and breakfast run by who has taken in a child of Gatlin, Micah. Micah eventually becomes the leader of the resurrected corn cult and he along with a group of kids under the influence of "he who walks behind the rows" go onto kill adults. The gore in this sequel is piled on compared to the first. We gets slashed throats, a man who bleeds out of his nose and ears until he dies. Some pretty decent special effects for a lower budgeted horror movie. The acting is pretty good as well. Terence Knox and Paul Scherrer as father and son are good, a young Christie Clark of Days of Our Lives fame plays the heroine Lacey perfectly. And although Ryan Bollman (Micah) is no Isaac from the first film, he does a nice job as the evil cult leader. Can Micah be stopped or will he enlist Danny into his cult of adult hating young people?These Children of the Corn movies get a bad rap; but as a fan of the first one, I thought Children of the Corn II was a pretty good entry to the franchise. The plot is obviously not believable and has many holes in it, but for these kind of films I try to take reality out of the equation. The one problem I have with it is that at the end of the first one, the main characters destroyed the demon in the corn and at the start of this one, there's no explanation as to how it came to be again. We also get an interesting opinion from a few characters in this that suggest the kids are killers because the watch "too many horror movies". I thought that was a nice little touch. Overall a decent sequel. 6/10

This movie doesn't quite have the awesome start the first one did – but I'll take a few decomposing Gatlin residents over nothing.It's the aftermath of the downfall of the creepy munchkin Isaac, the Ginger Ninja Malachi, and He Who Walks Behind the Rows. And reporters and residents from Hemingford the neighbouring town have descended upon Gatlin, with the surviving Gatlin kids being farmed off to new families so the carnage can start again.Coming to join the corn party is a teenage boy with a horrible haircut, Danny, his daddy issues and his daddy. They stay with 'attractive hostess with no real story' who has taken in a Gatlin kid called Micah, who also has daddy issues, so of course a friendship springs up between Danny and Micah that eventually leads to sacrificing people, as is the natural course of things.Nothing much really happens after that. The Gatlin kids shuffle around town in a group staring at stuff. I've decided that Micah is the best starer – he really tries at it. And blah blah blah – people start dying. I'm bored already.My favourite death (so few times you get to start a sentence that way) would be the old lady under the house, with all her howling and honking and crappy acting I was hoping one of the five year olds would just run up and start kicking her in the stomach – alas not to be, but she was crushed and the kids stood in their group and stared. Followed closely by the man who just started haemorrhaging blood all over the church. (Micah did some of his best staring in this scene – watch out for it) During this time, Danny has found love with a pretty young girl called Needy McNeederson. His daddy starts making sweet sweet love to 'attractive hostess with no real story' and there's some weird back story stuff thrown in about the corn and poisons and old Indian legends etched into rocks. None of it really makes any sense – doesn't fit in with the story in any way but it is told by a wise old American Indian man – so that lends some serious weight to what is being said.It all ends where it should – in the corn. Attempted sacrifices are abound, professions of love and apologies are made. Micah's yelling all over the place and doesn't seem to be staring as much which makes me sad. He Who Walks Behind the Rows turns up briefly and does his thing. It's just another day with the Children of the Corn.All in all, a pretty crappy sequel – but if you watch one, you gotta watch em all. Next up; Children of the Corn 3 –Gangsta Corn.

**SPOILERS** Long awaited sequel to the 1984 Stephen King home on the range or cornfield horror flick "Children of the Corn" that took nine years in the making.In this corny film the children now eight years older and looking as if they didn't age a day are discovered by the local police and news reporters after their parents were found slaughtered in a basement in the now almost deserted town of Glatin. Instead of trying to find the children's, who should have been the #1 suspects in their murder, parents killers the children are shipped off to Hemingford to be adopted by the unsuspecting people there. In no time at all deaths starts occurring at Hemingford with the elders, that's those over 20 years old, being targeted by an unknown force of nature that happens to be the zombie like children themselves.To make the movie interesting we also have a parent & son dispute involving supermarket tabloid newsman John Garrett, Terrance Knox, and his bratty and foul mouth son Danny, Paul Scherrer. Both Pop & Jr. don't see eye to eye in their very shaky relationship with each other that involves Poppa leaving Momma and taking Jr. with him when Jr was only an infant. This soon ends when Danny on his way back to New York runs into sexy and recently arrived, to Hemmingford, Lacy Hellerstat, Christie Clark. Almost overnight Danny drops is bratty and foul mouth persona, as well as hair color, and goes back home to daddy just so he can be with Lacy who's more then willing to jump into the hey with him.Back to the children of the corn their instructed by their leader the blow-hard and wild eyed Micah, Ryan Bollman, to make ready the ultimate sacrifice in human blood of the elders in town by the time the harvest moon arrives. We also have a strange side-plot in the film involving the town physician Dr, Richard Appley played by Ed Gradey, who's a dead ringer for the former NY State Senate majority leader Joe Bruno, and Sheriff Blaine, Wallace Mark, who are both involved with the dirty goings on with the town's corn harvest. The two had secretly stored away the corn for over a year that resulted in it becoming infected with the deadly Aflatoxin virus! That's what happened to the corn harvest when both Blaine & Appley left it hidden and didn't burn it! The rotten and infected corn is now slowly infecting the entire town which in the end will kill far more people then the children of the corn ever will!***SPOILER*** It's only when university professor and Native American Frank Redbear who's actually gray, Ned Romero, shows up later in the movie that it finally starts to make some kind of sense. Redbear soon gets the totally mixed up John Garrett to go alone with him in his attempt to put an end to the children of the corn and their deranged leader Micah in carrying out their evil plan; That's in them killing everyone over 20 in town. Redbear in an effort to stop the harvest moon human sacrifice gets a hold of a mechanical corn picker and steam rolls through the cornfield picking apart the crazed and demonic Micah and turning him into human cornmeal. That's before he himself finally expired from an arrow shot into his gut by one of Micah's followers.In the end we finally get to see the mysterious "One who walks in the Rows" the real power behind Micah who happens to be some kind giant gopher or prairie dog who only works by night and underground.Despite all the blood letting and violence in the movie it's only good for laughs and nothing else. The spaced out and zombie like children of the corn are so ridicules and unbelievable that you can't take them seriously for a second even if you try to. With all the hysterics in the film the one who really takes the cake, and steals every scene that he's in, is the local preacher Rev. Holling, John Bennes. Rev. Hollings is so off the wall and at the same time comical that it's hard to believe that he, in his constant talks and sermons about and against the evils of sex and fornication, could take himself seriously! Which in fact makes Bennes' "serious" acting that of an Academy Award caliber performance.