Tag Archives: movies

Movie Review: Children of the Corn (1984)

11 Jun

How this movie/Stephen King turned driving through a cornfield (a pretty boring experience, trust me, as a Midwesterner) into one of the most horrifyingly claustrophobic and isolated cult rituals I have ever seen is brilliant. 

Movie poster for Children of the Corn, 1984. A silhouetted hand raises a sickle against a blood-red sky above a dark cornfield. The title "Children of the Corn" appears in bold white text at the bottom.

I discovered the movie while researching comparable titles to my own next novel. I always knew it existed but, for some reason, it never quite appealed to me, until I learned it was based on a Stephen King short story. That pushed me over the edge. 

What makes Children of the Corn classic horror is its roots in the fear of sensory deprivation.

Burt and Vicky are driving through Nebraska when they accidentally hit a child. They swear he came straight out of nowhere. And when there are miles and miles of tall, sun-bleached, waving corn blowing in the wind, there is simply no way to tell what’s hiding inside of it. That image,  simple as it sounds, is the beating heart of this film.

The two scramble with how to deal with this, and the further they go into the endlessness of the roads ahead, the more they find themselves circling nothing but corn, decimated storefronts, and evasive, guarded residents. This leads them to the ghost town of Gatlin. 

But that’s just what the surface shows.

Underneath, a twisted cult-preacher boy named Isaac and his second-in-command, Malachai, run the town. No adults remain. He Who Walks Behind the Rows commanded the children to slaughter every one of them.

A scene from Children of the Corn. A group of children sit in a circle at the edge of a cornfield. A boy stands at the center. Behind him is a police officers skeleton perched as a scarecrow attached to a tall wooden cross made of dried corn stalks.

Thus, Burt and Vicky’s crime is a simple one: being adults in the wrong place at the terribly wrong time.

One of King’s early literary inspirations was William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, and it shows here. Children of the Corn is about the terrifying idea of a world without rules, without adults, without the structures we’ve grown complacent to. It takes one of the most ordinary and mundane American settings, a small town where a stranger would expect a friendly hello, a polite wave, and easy hospitality, and makes everything in it disturbing and petrifying.

The corn breathes alongside them, growing more unsettling with every scene.

I won’t go into the rich undercurrents of fundamentalism, cult and folk ritual, or the movie’s representation of self-imposed malicious parentification. 

The movie created such a powerful dread that it spurred a new archetype for the genre: The Children of the Corn Dynamic – youth-led groups or cults that completely overthrow and control the adult population (King, 1978; TV Tropes).

P.S. Do not confuse this with the 2023 remake/reboot. The original is much more worth your time!

Reserve your DVD copy in the BCCLS system here.

Bluray here.

Or, read the short story published in 1977 on Overdrive/Libby.

Comment below your thoughts once you’ve had a watch.

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Written by:
Sean Willey
Information and Digital Services Assistant

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Day or Dusk, Dawn or Dead of Eve: The Night House Sticks With You All Day

26 Feb

The Night House scared me in my bones and through my veins.

Film poster showing a woman standing alone at the end of a wooden dock at a lake in the dead of night. There is a shoreline in the background with a distant house beneath a red moon through heavy clouds. The text reads “The Night House.”

The director plays with angles and shapes to distort your vision while the writers weave the slightest and most intriguing details into the character’s background and behavior to keep you guessing. The scares are well-timed and effective. Each serve a purpose. Every twinge of dread or outright jump in your seat is vindicated. From the bumps to the spooks to the visual distortion and to the realism of the suspension of belief, the fear and unease of this movie lives in human flaws, moral debate, and in the spinning wheel of grief.

The Night House (2020; R) blends psychological horror, suspense, and mystery. You can reserve the DVD here in the BCCLS system or find a copy at the Hoboken Public Library.

Beth is reeling from the death of her husband and, in that grief, has decided to stay in the lakehouse they built together. She puts up a strong front and continues with her day-to-day life, but she can’t hide from the night and the tricks on her mind in her dreams. Soon, she cannot tell what a dream is and what is real. Or are they the same? Either way, a ghostly presence is luring her in. So, she begins digging for answers and going into her husband’s affairs. There lies a trail of dark and disturbing urges. ​

The film is about the seductive battle between not wanting to let go without all the answers, vs. the monsters in our mind that feed on us as we walk through that rotted, dark tunnel. On its simplest level, too, it’s the classic sparring between what lies in this world and what exists beyond it, and at what stages in our lives is it possible for them to blend. ​

Watch under the caution of your lamps and with blankets by your side. Don’t think about the souls that once walked through your room now, perhaps hiding under the couch as you reach for your drink. You might find yourself noticing, too, how angles in your home, at just the right tilt, silhouette the human form. Ghosts and spirits prey on our lazy, presumptuous vision and blind expectation that everything will be as it is when we turn around.

My heart is still pumping tight to the chest, and my throat clenches when I consider the story’s morality. It could happen to any of us, and I, for one, will take extra notice the next time I’m at a secluded cabin of every boat rock, every vacant house, every angle shift, every depth beyond dark windows, and every light across the lake.

Reserve your copy in the BCCLS system here to pick up at the Hoboken Public Library.

Comment below your thoughts once you’ve had a watch.

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Written by:
Sean Willey
Information and Digital Services Assistant

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