Children of the Corn 666: Isaac's Return (1999)

Sex :
Violence :
Director Kari Skogland
Writers Tim Sulka, John Franklin
Starring Natalie Ramsey, John Franklin, Paul Popowich, Nancy Allen
Genre Corn Demon
Tagline The latest and most horrorfying chapter...
Country

Review

“Go! Before you corrupt my innocent children.” - Isaac

Man oh man, I should have been keeping an eye on this franchise, seems there have been 665 sequels to the original, do I ever suck. This one finally ended up on shelves Downunder in 2007, and there's possibly a good reason for that. The tagline for the movie is quite correct, it's a horrifying notion that anyone would have put their name to this dribble masquerading as terror in the corn fields. Director Skogland is trying her best, but when you are left with the burnt remains of a corn chowder then there's really not a banquet to be made. I would have settled for corn fritters to be honest – guilty pleasure with the franchise to the fore – but didn't even get that.

Hannah returns to her home town of Gatlin to find her biological mother; she was adopted out as a baby. All's not well in Gatlin, with Hannah picking up some dude who disappears from her car in mid sentence, a lot of creepy kids hanging out, and an assortment of adults with roos loose in the top paddock. Things get worse when Isaac, leader of the cult in the original movie, wakes up from a coma and starts spouting off about a prophecy. Didn't he get incinerated or something in the first movie? Gosh, hard to recall that epic of Oscar-worthiness.

Naturally “he who walks behind the rows” makes the scene in an unexpected way… at least, for the five or so Tasmanians who bothered watching this one; the rest of us picked up on that after about ten minutes. Actually quite an atmospheric movie ensues, pity about the script, acting, and everything else.

Ready to head into the Nebraska corn fields again?

In 2001 Director Kari Skogland was voted as one of the top ten newcomers to keep an eye on. Oops! She actually does a pretty good job with Isaac's Return and is the only saving grace to the movie. Skogland layers the atmosphere, has some good wide angles going down with dusty roads through those friggin’ corn fields, and wraps the action (what little we get) in a fine fashion. Skogland is far too fine a director to have been lumbered with this movie. She is definitely someone to keep an eye on, but by heck she needs a new agent if this is the best gig she can score. Would love to see what Skogland could do with a decent horror script and some reasonably talented actors behind her.

Where Isaac's Return really fails is in the script department. Here we have a movie that weaves all over the road, throws in too many angles, before finally running off the road and into a ditch of despair with a resolution and surprise ending that is at best underwhelming. Actually, the resolution was complete rubbish and the shock ending has been done about a thousand times before.

First up we have a prophecy about the first born of the original children siring some sort of super demonic kiddie needing a good bum belting. Well okay, I can run with that idea, evil begets evil, which in turn begets even worse evil. But did we forget that life expectancy in a certain out-of-the-way Nebraska town is around eighteen or something? Clearly the script writers did, or at least decided to have a momentary lapse of reason as it would have impacted on their script. So tenet one from the Stephen King story, used heavily in promotion, is sort of abandoned as things go from the sublime to the ridiculous. Thinking about it, has Stephen King written 665 short stories based around Gatlin? The whole Children of the Corn saga diverted from King's clever little chiller at about the second reel of the first movie, so shouldn't be complaining really. Hey, Hollywood script writers know a lot more about horror than Stephen King, you can just tell that from all those books of theirs on the shelves of your local bookstore. For Utah readers, I'm being ever so sarcastic here; ask New Yorkers to explain “sarcastic” to you.

Naturally, this being a Children of the Corn outing, we have to have the kiddies involved, else it would make the whole title rather ludicrous. In Isaac's Return we get a whole passel of them hanging around for no purpose whatsoever; they don't actually do anything, apart from one inbred-looking mofo who sort of pops up from time to time to unnerve Hannah. Jeez, did that kid ever fall out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down. You see the same kids loitering outside Hannah's motel, loitering in the corn fields, and by heck if they aren't loitering around the township as well. And that's kind of all they do. Shouldn't they be, oh I don't know, spray painting buildings, tipping cows, and sacrificing the odd adult to “he who walks behind the rows”? Don't know about you, but have the feeling these kids have been watching way too much reality TV rather then devoting time to their religious studies. Expected more from the little tykes to be honest. Kids today, huh!

At least we have Isaac returning and delivering on the religious fundamental mumbo jumbo involving corn, corn gods, and crosses made of corn husks. Don't know about you but in the original movie Isaac looked pretty much like he had a load in his pants and wasn't happy about it; in the adult version he looks like he still has a load in his pants and is even less happy than previously. On the bright side of the sacrificial altar, at least Isaac gets to deliver some excruciatingly painful dialogue that must have sounded cool when the script writers thought it up, but is simply dross when listened to. No wonder the kids around Gatlin have lost that old time religion; Isaac simply doesn't have the spark he once did.

Don't even get me started on “he who walks behind the rows”, simply a stupid plot development that had me wondering if Messrs Sulka and Franklin hadn't been dropped on their collective heads as babies. Guess that was meant to be one of the shock surprise twists in this horrifying fable; personally wanted more of the gopher on steroids antics of the previous “he who yadda yadda”.

Natalie Ramsey (Hannah) does a reasonable enough job in this hash brown, but fails when it comes to being scared and all. At least she has three facial looks, which is one more than William Shatner. That's a plus, right? John Franklin (Isaac) reprises his role from the 1984 original movie, so that was kind of cool for us horror geeks. Here he conclusively proves he can't act and hasn't improved with age. At least he has a scriptwriting credit – oh wait, that's not a good thing. Still think John Franklin's best ever role was as “Walkabout Chucky” in Child's Play (1988). No one does wooden dummy quite like Franklin, and I noted he tried to bring the same acting chops to Isaac's Return.

Paul Popowich (Gabriel) was simply odious, but not in a comic sense, more in the “he stank like your sports socks after a week in the washing basket” fashion. Franklin was Oscar material in comparison. Nancy Allen (Rachel) managed to look embarrassed throughout, but has at least gone onto a rewarding television career appearing as the character no one remembers in various shows.

Surprisingly this corn cob managed an R rating and it wasn't to do with gratuitous nudity. Actually, given the low violence, how the hell did the MPAA come up with that one? The corn dollies are completely naked for those interested, and we do get a sex scene filmed with a lot of decorum by Kari Skogland. Word to the wise, Ms Skogland: no wonder you don't get a whole lot of horror gigs, gratuitous nudity is a requirement in the “B” graders.

Terry Huud delivered a score that went in one ear and out the other. Nothing memorable so guess it did its job without overly exciting me.

Kari Skogland is a hell of a better director than Isaac Returns deserves. She has the atmospherics working for her – loved the discarded and crumbling hospital – but simply doesn't have a strong enough script to breath life into. Her cast is woefully inadequate, and Skogland ends up with a complete loser of a movie. Frighteningly, this is the worst outing in the entire franchise I have ever had the dubious pleasure of watching, though admittedly I haven't seen around 662 of the other films yet. Naturally I had a high old time with the whole popcorn flavour, and am now just hanging to see the seventh instalment. The siren call of crap movies just gets me every time, folks.

Isaac Returns made about $14.5 million at the North American box office. Oh wait, that was the first movie; this one was straight to DVD, hence it made $0 at the box office. I would imagine DVD sales might have been slightly over the box office figure; I paid $3 for my copy, and since the franchise looks likely to go on indefinitely it must have made some cash.

If you are a hardened Children of the Corn fan then you probably won’t like this one, Lord alone knows no one else will anyway. Possibly only of interest to “B” movie buffs, and then only if there's nothing available by the likes of Uwe Boll. The cornfields of Nebraska have been harvested and we are left with Isaac returning, but does anyone really give a damn?

ScaryMinds Rates this movie as ...

  A franchise in decline, but it can still shill some rubes.