Children of the Corn: Revelation (2001)

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

With 7 titles and 1 remake under it's belt, everybody knows that the Children of the Corn series has run it's course and is now being kept alive in attempts to bleed it for a little more money. That's not to say that they didn't try in Revelation. I watched this on Netflix expecting another painful installment like Isaac's Return but this showed slight improvement.They attempted to breathe new life into the series by trading the cornfields of small-town Nebraska for a dilapidated apartment building in small-town Nebraska; going for more of a haunted house feel than an evil children feel. The story line had potential but, unfortunately, it didn't live up. And here's why:The Children: The children are really what the movie is always about. But for some reason, the small but menacing children of the series are swapped out for more of a generally weird brand of child. The "stand there and stare" move gets less creepy the more it is used (and it's used A LOT) and starts becoming more annoying than anything. The only thing scary about the "main" evil child, Abel, is his Amish-style haircut. Although their uncanny ability to teleport makes for some creepy moments, I never really found myself being scared of the kids.The Supporting Characters: Almost every single character that we meet in the movie serves one purpose; to give the kids someone to kill while the main character, Jamie, tries to figure out what's going on. The few supporting characters who don't meet a grisly end pop up at random times during the movie until they're needed to progress the movie along.The Story: While the story has never been a strong point of the Children of the Corn series, Revelations tries a little too hard to make the story compelling. It begins with Jamie trying to find her missing grandmother. It then turns into a trip to the past where we learn that her grandmother was the sole survivor of a mass cult suicide and, in an odd reverse-butterfly effect type of motivation, the children return to kill Jamie since her grandmother was supposed to die and Jamie should not have even been born. It's a rather complex plot line for a run-of-the-mill horror movie.The Main Character: Although we follow Jamie as she frantically searches for her grandmother, we don't really feel any connection to her. Very little background is given to her character besides the fact that she lives in California and talks to her grandmother regularly. The casting director did a good job of bringing Claudette Mink on for the movie as her good looks tend to distract you from the sub-par script that they handed her. She does a good job as the concerned grand-daughter but when the action starts up, she starts to overact. You see this most obviously towards the end when she's attacked by evil corn stalks that remind many horror movie aficionados of the "tree rape" scene of Sam Raimi's "The Evil Dead."In the end, it was a half-way decent movie. It certainly won't win any awards but it's just creepy enough to hold your attention. And at brisk 82 minutes, it goes by pretty quick.

Children of the Corn: Revelation (2001) * (out of 4) The seventh and final film in the original series has a young woman (Claudette Mink) traveling to Omaha when her elderly grandmother doesn't answer her phone. The woman discovers her grandmother missing and with the help of a cop they start to investigate her past, which leads them to a cult that she was in many years ago where several kids killed themselves. Now, it appears, the ghosts are back and looking for new victims. As with many of the sequels, this one here has very little to do with the original short story by Stephen King but this one here goes out and tries to mix in a little of THE SHINING as well. The film is a complete mess as it doesn't work as an entry in the series and it isn't strong enough to work on its own. The entire premise is rather predictable as we know why the grandmother is missing and we know who the mysterious children are long before our leading lady. The entire movie runs only 80-minutes but it feels much long as I was having a hard time just making it through to the end. The performances are all bland to decent with Mink making for an interesting lead, although she isn't given anything to do. Michael Ironside appears as a strange priest but doesn't add too much. The violence this time out isn't overly graphic and the gore is at a rather low count but even if it had been more it probably wouldn't have helped the movie.

Dull I really liked first 30 minutes of this movie, it kinda reminded me an old-school horror adventure game – the chick comes to creepy place, where her grandmother is supposed to live, but she can't find her, so she goes around collecting clues and meeting strange local people, while witnessing strange events and meeting some strangely looking kids and the acting is actually not bad up to this point, but after the 30th minute movie kinda falls apart. Death scenes are lame and not scary to say the least and the scariest thing you see would probably be some little kids playing evil dead – a video game on a machine. Children laugh effect sounds extremely fake and not threatening. As for the story it stops really developing after 30th minute too. Nothing gets accomplished, except from local people being slaughter and it's just down the hill from there. It would probably be safe to say that this movie would better stand alone with some different plot elements because COTC aren't really that important here. I would've loved the movie if it could've sustained the atmosphere of the beginning, but it failed to do that. Failed big time. The ending is lame and very unsatisfying too. If you're going to watch this movie I recommend to shut it down after that magical 30th minute I keep mentioning. Unless you want to be bored to sleep that is. Good stuff lasts for about 40 % of the movie so I give it 4/10.

"Children of the Corn: Revelation" is the seventh sequel in this never ending horror series, and was one that I actually really enjoyed. This film is about a woman named Jamie, who arrives in a small rural town to visit her grandmother, Hattie. When she arrives at the dilapidated Hampton Arms apartment building, which is incidentally located in the middle of a cornfield, she discovers that her grandmother has mysteriously disappeared. After having a strange encounter with some children at a small-town market nearby one evening, Jamie begins to get a little creeped out. She goes to the police to report her grandmother missing, and the strange children keep on appearing to her on many occasions around the building as she awaits any news of her grandmother's discovery. Then the other residents of the building begin to disappear one by one, and the many children who are lurking around seem to be behind it...This one really isn't related to the rest of the movies, but I think that's why it prevailed in my eyes. The same plot being rehashed over and over in this series was a little annoying, and I found "Part 6: Isaac's Return" to be godawful. I liked the atmosphere this movie set up; the building was creepy and the bizarre children that pop up all over the place were surprisingly unnerving. The film had some fairly decent scare-scenes and the actors did a fair job here. The ending was a little abrupt though. Some of the CGI corn effects (especially the ones used in the finale) were a little overdone and corny (yes, pun intended!), but it was nothing to pine over. I also found the bathtub scene to be kind of funny and ridiculous, but what can you expect? It's number seven in a horror series in which 90% of the films have straight-to-video releases. If you suspend your disbelief, this is an entertaining, reasonably creepy little flick.While it isn't cinematic brilliance, I found "Children of the Corn: Revelation" to be a decent sequel, and probably my favorite of this horror series. It had a somewhat original story, some good scares and creepy imagery, and stands as something marginally fresh in the recycled series. Worth a watch, even if you haven't seen the previous installments. 7/10.