Film Review: CHILDREN OF THE CORN (2020): Kate Moyer is Good at Playing Wickedly Evil in a Tepid Remake

Children of the Corn Review

Children of the Corn (2020) Film Review, a movie written and directed by Kurt Wimmer and starring Elena Kampouris, Kate Moyer, Callan Mulvey, Bruce Spence, Alyla Browne, Miranda Cash, Luke Dean, Mike Duncan, Rafferty Grierson and Kyra Harlan.

Director Kurt Wimmer’s new re-imagining of Children of the Corn starts off excruciatingly difficult to watch between its disturbing scenes of violence and its choppy editing but, halfway through, it picks up momentum and becomes a somewhat enjoyable exercise in terror. The main reason for this is the performance by child actress Kate Moyer who takes her role as the wicked Eden Edwards to the extreme. Moyer is the reason to see Children of the Corn because the actress manages to bring an incredible amount of precision to her evil tendencies in her star-making role, making us root for the main character in the movie, Boleyn Williams (Elena Kampouris) to stop Eden once and for all.

I have not seen the Children of the Corn movie from the mid-1980’s which was based on a story by Stephen King. I wouldn’t want to see it after watching this new remake either because it would be impossible for that movie to showcase a performance as terrifically demented as Moyer’s is in the new version. It’s to Moyer’s credit that I wouldn’t want to see anyone else playing this role if this character was even in the original to begin with. Moyer becomes Eden (the leader of the children of the corn) and does it frightfully so.

Set in the cornfields of Nebraska, the new movie opens with a group of young children dying which automatically makes the picture have a certain level of discomfort right from the get-go. It doesn’t get easier to watch for quite a bit as Eden and her posse of young children take over the town and lock up the adults in a local prison. Boleyn pets a horse outside the police precinct at one point only to see the horse has a rope which is connected to a man being hung. This movie is not subtle at all in the horror it presents to the audience. One scene has Eden and her company of evil children throwing dirt on top of a group of adults as these poor older people get buried alive. It almost reminded me of the discomfort I had watching the most disturbing movie of all-time, The House That Jack Built.

Soon, we get a scene with an old man known as Pastor Penny (Bruce Spence) having his eyes ripped out by Eden after we learn that the Pastor may have abused Eden. After that scene, the movie settles more into a formulaic horror movie but a pretty exciting one to watch because we don’t know how Boleyn will escape Eden’s wrath. Boleyn sends some of her friends to get help but they too turn up dead. There is the attempt by Eden to drench Boleyn in flammable liquid in order to stop her but Boleyn uses her smarts to outwit her for a bit.

There are plenty of horror cliches in Wimmer’s movie. There’s a car that is introduced that will conveniently be used for an escape towards the movie’s ending. And watch the car’s back seat too while you’re at it! Then, there’s the matter of “he who walks” which is a supernatural monster in the cornfields who shows up and steals the movie in a couple of key scenes later in the film. Wimmer mixes up cliches with good scares as some suspenseful moments abound that will definitely keep audiences invested enough to stay to the end if they make it that far into the movie to begin with.

Children of the Corn is what it is, for better or worse, because of Kate Moyer’s scary performance that takes the new remake to the next level of terror. It is almost on the same level as Linda Blair’s work in The Exorcist although The Exorcist is a great film and Children of the Corn is far from great. Elena Kampouris is good here too but she’s not on the same wavelength of Moyer. Playing the educated college-bound lead, Kampouris does well enough to want to see her triumph but let’s face it, villains get to chew more scenery than heroes do and that’s the case here.

While Children of the Corn is disturbingly sickening to watch in its opening stages, Moyer’s work is worth sitting through the grueling opening scenes to see. In fact, this movie will be on Shudder in a little more than a couple of weeks and, there, you can skip through some of the more horrific early moments in the film and watch the last half hour which is almost as good as horror films come. Of course, there’s not much new here in that last half hour except for the novelty of Moyer’s fine turn playing a monster child who we can’t wait to see get her fair comeuppance. If a sequel is made to this movie, Moyer’s casting would be pivotal to that film’s success. She’s left some pretty big shoes to fill here and it’s doubtful anyone would be able to duplicate her success from this movie.

Rating: 6/10

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