Children of the Corn: Genesis

CHILDREN OF THE CORN: GENESIS

The eighth film in the Children of the Corn series (or the ninth if you count the 2009 made-for-TV remake of the original), Genesis follows a couple (Tim and Allie) stranded in a California desert due to car trouble.  Tim and Allie find a small isolated house and persuade the inhabitants (a creepy older fellow called Preacher and his mail-order bride Helen) to let them call a towing service only to learn that they’ll essentially be stranded until the next morning (the nearest garage is closed on Sundays).  Preacher lays down some ground rules (basically don’t snoop around) that Allie promptly breaks.  After using the outhouse, Allie wanders around the property and discovers a locked shed that seems to imprison a child.  She tells Tim about the kid.  The plot then becomes increasingly incoherent with the efforts of Tim and Allie to get away thwarted by a supernatural force that keeps the doors and windows impenetrable.  Preacher gushes some exposition about how he comes from Gatlin (the small Nebraska town of the first film) and would have been slaughtered there along with all the other adults had he not been away at the time the mass-murder happened.  Allie has a dream about being assaulted and crucified by children in a corn field.  The narrative spirals deeper into incomprehensibility as Helen gets killed by the kid who dwells in the shed, Tim and Allie drive away in a car left behind by a cop who showed up during the night thanks to a 9-1-1 call, there’s a horrible accident on the freeway that kills Tim, and Allie ends up back at Preacher’s place.

Though the short story by Stephen King that spawned this franchise is worth a read, the films in the series range from barely watchable (the first entry) to flat-out awful (part 6: Isaac’s Return).  Genesis falls somewhere between these two extremes.  The best moment is the fate of the cop who shows up after the call to 9-1-1 (Tim and Allie watch through a window as the policeman gets yanked up into the night sky by some unseen force).  Children of the Corn: Genesis is the latest nonsensical entry in a mediocre film series that somehow goes on and on.  Avoid.