Children of the Corn
Directed by Fritz Kiersch
- horror
- thriller
The story
A traveling couple end up in an abandoned Nebraska town inhabited by a cult of murderous children who worship a demon that lives in the local cornfields.
What it’s like
Flat, washed-out Nebraska daylight over endless cornfields, with the stalks rustling in a constant hush that becomes its own kind of dread. Much of the film plays out in the bleached glare of midday and the dusty amber of a sun going down over empty main streets, and the camera tends to hold on wide, still frames of rural emptiness that make the town feel abandoned even when it isn't. The synth-leaning score pulses in brief stabs and then drops back into near silence, so the quiet often feels more threatening than the music. Pacing is uneven, with stretches of slow driving and searching broken by sudden, sharp bursts of panic. Violence is present and occasionally graphic, including stabbings and child-on-adult killings, with some gore and sustained menace; it lands as shock more than prolonged brutality. Religious cult imagery, sermons, and ritual sacrifice run through the whole thing. Best suited to a Halloween-season watch or a late-night viewing with friends, for people who enjoy 1980s small-town horror, creepy child villains, and a slow-building sense of wrongness rather than anything gentle.
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