Ian West’s review published on Letterboxd:
Midwest Midsommar.
I first encountered an inkling of this supernatural folk horror killer kid cult corn jam’s existence from the Night Shift paperback.
A specific edition of said book featured the movie poster for this as it’s cover, and it was sticking out from my mother’s bag while on a long drive from New Jersey deep into Pennsylvania. I gazed at it for what felt like hours as we drove through the winding rural farm filled backroads... running my hands over the creased orange cover and spotting the eyes in the cornstalks.
I didn’t read/watch the story/movie until a few years later when, on another driving excursion with my folks, I HBO watched this under cover of blankets at a shitty Bates Motel type roadside place on a dusty highway with a broken air conditioner just barely hanging on and the loud humming of a neon no vacancy neon sign soundwaving the night sky. The intro scared the shit out of me. Cornfields scared the shit out of me, and Children of the Corn became one of my favorite movies and a HUGE staple all the way up to my late teen years.
Then it vanished.
One day in my early twenties it disappeared from my yearly viewing rotations until a few years ago when I started my summer CotC/Amityville marathons and I kinda fell in love with it all over again. The first two acts are gold for me, before everything gets a bit wonky towards the end, but I love the atmosphere on display here—wide shots of baron sun-soaked roads bookended by endless cornstalks, an empty ghost town where you never feel like your alone, the bright red blood, the closeups of numerous odd looking blades that were alien to me before this movie, that previously mentioned opening slaughter, and that chilling main theme that still soundwaves my nightmares all these years later.
This thing gets bashed left and right on here even though far worse/less interesting flicks with even more expensive blu-ray price tags get praised via starry-eyed Outlander Jabroni collector mentality bullshit but whatevs. Nostalgia aside, I still find this and the next 4 sequels (especially 3—one of the best horror movies of the 90’s) to be really effective—in fact, for me, and I might be alone on this but I really couldn’t care less, this is one of my favorite horror movies of the 80’s and none of you will ever be able to convince me otherwise.
Also, I feel like the Hooper influence on this Texas born Director is understated in this movie... if this came out in 1978 and was shot in 16mm a lot of folks would look at this movie way differently.
So glad this found it’s way back to me after all that time—I love this movie.