Children of the Corn

A traveling couple becomes stranded in an isolated Nebraska town, only to discover that the local children have formed a murderous religious cult dedicated to an unseen deity dwelling beneath the cornfields.

Corn is the operative word here, in one of the many truly awful movie versions of Stephen King literature. This time, a thirty-page story is turned into a full-blown feature that fits right in with the most formulaic slasher flicks of the 1980s. Peter Horton and Linda Hamilton play an unmarried couple driving across the rural Midwest when they hit a dying boy who stumbles out of the endless fields and directly in front of their bumper.

Rather than being a routine roadside tragedy, the victim turns out to have had his throat cut prior to the impact. Seeking a telephone or local authorities, they transport the body to the nearest town, an eerie, desolate Nebraska outpost named Gatlin. Instead of turning around, the couple wanders through abandoned streets and empty houses, eventually making the classic horror-movie blunder of splitting up to investigate suspicious noises in empty basements.

The original King short story built its tension around slow atmospheric dread, but the film spoils the mystery immediately in the opening diner massacre. We already know Gatlin is controlled by a fanatical youth cult that slaughtered every adult in town under the command of their child preacher Isaac (John Franklin) and his ruthless enforcer Malachai (Courtney Gains).

The film leans heavily into religious fanaticism, but the dialogue consistently falters. When confronting a literal supernatural entity burrowing through the soil, the narrative still pauses for Horton’s character to deliver high-minded lectures about religious tolerance. A few eerie rural visuals and memorable villain performances cannot rescue a script weighed down by cheap optical effects and slasher clichés, contrasting with the sharper genre thrillers we cover on MovieToWatch.

Three years after a religious child cult executed every adult resident in the small agricultural community of Gatlin, Nebraska, medical intern Burt Stanton (Peter Horton) and his girlfriend Vicky Baxter (Linda Hamilton) drive cross-country to his new internship. While passing through isolated farmlands, their car strikes a young boy who stumbles onto the road. Examining the body, Burt realizes the boy’s throat was slashed before the vehicle hit him.

Unable to find assistance at an abandoned rural gas station, Burt places the body in the trunk and heads into Gatlin to report the death. Upon arrival, the couple finds the town eerily abandoned, with dead corn husks littering streets and buildings stripped of modern amenities. The town is governed by Isaac Chroner (John Franklin), a child evangelist who preaches devotion to “He Who Walks Behind the Rows,” a sinister entity demanding that all inhabitants be sacrificed upon reaching their nineteenth birthday.

While Burt heads to a local church to find a town ledger, he leaves Vicky behind near their car. Malachai (Courtney Gains), Isaac’s violent lieutenant, ambushes Vicky and drags her to the cornfields to be bound to a cross as an offering. Burt enters the church, discovers the grisly truth about the massacre from two young defectors, Job and Sarah, and races into the rows to save Vicky before the cult completes its ritual.