Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice (1992)

Sex :
Violence :
Director David Price
Writers A.L.Katz, Gilbert Adler
Starring Terence Knox, Paul Scherrer, Ryan Bollman, Christie Clark, Rosalind Allen, Ned Romero
Genre Fundamentalism
Tagline The ultimate adult nightmare
Country

Review

"Hey, ragman, how's it going? I love that piece you did on JFK and his secret marriage to Rock Hudson, that was some journalism." - Wayde McKenzie

Tabloid journalist John Garrett is driving through the Nebraska Bible belt with his petulant son Danny, who he apparently hardly ever sees as the marriage was over long ago. He gets sidetracked from his last ditch reporting assignment when the massacre of the adults of Gatlin is discovered and the news media descend like ravourness wolves. Seems the only survivors are a bus load of children who are rambling on about corn and blood. Of course no one thinks some psychiatric help may be in order for the children, I assume blood sacrifice to corn gods is an everyday occurrence out in Nebraska.

John manages to find lodgings for himself and Danny at a Bed and Breakfast run by Angela in the nearby town of Hemingford. Also finding a port from the storm in Hemingford are the surviving children of Gatlin who are soon getting back to that old time religion and looking at making a few sacrifices to "he who walks behind the rows". As the body count mounts, and the new corn leader Micah gathers the children of Hemingford to the fold, John has to sort out whether we are dealing with a supernatural situation, hallucinations caused by corn mould, or something out of Native American mythology. The storm clouds are gathering and the corn spears are being sharpened.

Guess there's been a quantum leap in racial acceptance since this movie got released as even I was quite shocked at how poorly the minority characters were treated. Early in the movie the black character is being ordered around and pretty much treated as a slave by his white "master", while later in the movie John Garrett treats the character of Frank Redbear with almost distain, yes the white guy has all the action answers, and this with Redbear - a Doctor of Philosophy no less - being the clear intellectual superior to Garrett. Okay that's about as PC as it gets around here, on with the review, could you stop interrupting.

Final Sacrifice, and at the time that must have been a promising title, kicks off sometime after events in the first movie. Burt and the dancing Vicky are even referenced in one of the earlier scenes, though from memory the couple weren't on vacation so much as driving cross country to Burt's new practice. Anyways, and before we get further sidetrack, the full grisly story of Gatlin is coming to light, though to be honest the Authorities don't seem that concerned that all the adults and a sizeable percentage of the children have been slaughtered in the township. Guess that's your typical corn holing experience in Nebraska. So we get a quick recap of what happened previously, without the explanations overstaying their welcome and then it's on to Hemingford for round two of Fundamental religious children versus the duplicity of adults. I was happy enough with the start of this movie and surprisingly it did promise something half decent, I mention duplicity already right? - this movie defines the word as things quickly go off the path to movie greatness quicker than your popcorn can get cold as you are caught in the bright headlights of this outing like a deer.

There's a little something for everyone in this movie except those wanting a decent horror flick

Director David Price clearly knows his teen orientated horror movies and ensures there's an inventive death about every ten minutes to stop any chance of dramatic build in the movie. My personal favourites were the house being dropped on the old lady, even though there are clearly wooden foundations supporting the house leaving room to crawl around under it for an errant cat that might have scampered under there. Or death by remote control wheel chair, got to love a scene involving a dummy in a wheel chair going through a bingo parlour's plate glass window! There's more goodness to be had there but I'll leave it to the reader to discover the dubious pleasures in this regard for themselves.

The script writers, term used loosely here, are somewhat confused as to the cause of the fundamental religious overload the children are experiencing. We of course have our gopher on steroids we got in the first movie, complete with weather effects (in one scene at least), a laboured journey through Native American folklore as created by white people - apparently laying waste to the environment is a bad thing, but hey they had the message out before James Cameron belaboured the point in Avatar, or it could be due to mould on last year's corn crop being especially prone to making children hallucinate like rabid weasels, it's implied this is what happened in Gatlin. I was also happy to note some voodoo going down, because hey all corn demons love them some voodoo magic. So yeah there's a grab bag of explanations that you can pick and match from, though Final Sacrifice in a fit of didactic rampage makes it amply clear that "he who walks behind the rows" is a subterranean electricity spouting demonic entity. Actually showing the entity seems a tad beyond the special effects people, but it's not like they made this movie post 1980s or anything!

As usual we are subjected to young adults, aren't we being all PC, spouting off the most melodramatic lines that you are likely to hear outside a Stephenie Meyer novel. All that was missing was some smouldering looks and Vanilla doing her poo face thing. On the bright side we only have one "outlander" being screamed out, that for me was a definitely plus y'all. Helping out the kids are the adult actors that deliver their lines in a sort of ham fisted wooden manner that does full justice to their cardboard cut out characters. It's just awesomely bad, or if we wanted to be pedantic simply bad.

As one would expect from a movie trying to avoid any sort of adult rating T&A is notably missing, though Director David Price likes to tease, yes he does. Equally the claret is sprinkled about rather than spilt with abandon on the screen. If these two elements are your driving force for horror selection then you have the wrong movie. Actually should also point out the DVD print I watched hadn't been modernised in any form, real bad quality folks.

I'm sort of out of things to say about this derivative film that borrows in equal parts from the soundtrack to The Amityville Horror and Native American wisdom circa Poltergeist II. It came on, I saw it, no one is better for the experience. No recommendation, though I'm thinking of sacrificing the DVD to various Nordic gods, and that's my final thought on this one.

ScaryMinds Rates this movie as ...

  I'm not even going to start on the motives and bad decisions being made.