Corn

So I see this movie at Blockbuster. It's got a pretty ridiculous 3-D prismatic cover that features a herd of demonic sheep and it's called CORN. I figure I've got to take it home.

The tagline on the video box, "It's not nice to fool with Mother Nature" is borrowed from an old margarine commercial. This thing has got to be awful, right? Well, the reality is that it's not quite as bad as you might imagine. It ends up being a weird Rosemary's Baby kind of story about genetic manipulation and aggression. Not done with the same panache of 28 Days Later, it still strives for a unique story. In the end, "When Sheep Attack" might have been a better title, and it's pretty boring at times... but I think three stars is fair.

This movie caught my attention with it's unique box cover, which featured a deranged sheep in 3D, complete with demonic eyes. I like a good horror movie and something about mad sheep seemed a little creepy to me so I picked it up. This was just another case of the box misrepresenting itself as a horror movie when it was anything but. The crazy sheep only appeared two or three times and only in quick flashes. It was painfully obvious that, depending on which shot, the sheep were not real or was not doing anything out of the ordinary.

The story itself, was more about Emily Rasmussen (Jena Malone), a young, pregnant woman who has come home, most likely because there was nowhere else for her to go. Meanwhile, her neighbor has planted an experimental crop genetically mutated corn. The corn was meant to be altered genetically so it could grow with very little water so it could be grown in otherwise barren places such as parts of Africa to feed starving people. The side effect of this corn is it produces a weed as well, which makes the sheep act a little crazy, or get a high as the film explains. Sort of the same way a cat reacts towards catnip, but in more of a violent way.

The problem with this movie is that while all the characters in the movie have good intentions, not one of them is likable. Not even Emily. I have seen it mentioned before that the movie is similar to Erin Brockovich, and it is with regards to one woman going against a large corporation, but the pieces never quite fit together well and is nowhere close the the movie Brockovich was. Emily put the pieces together about the mysterious weed far too quickly and unrealistically to be believable.

Overall, the story turned out to be quite dull and moved pretty slow. I would have to rate this at about a 4.5 out of 10 stars.

When I was browsing horror dvds at the store, I came across this movie with a crazy red-eyed sheep on its cheesy 3D cover, which read "Jena Malone in CORN." I like Jena Malone (Donnie Darko, Saved!), and I glimpsed at the back, and thought "I have to see this!" I figured it was a z-grade horror movie about maniacal mutant sheep, cashing-in on the fact that somehow the latest Indie It-girl was involved in the project. Which, in all honesty, would have been all right by me, as I love cheesy horror movies and have never seen one about killer sheepies. Well, the packaging was misleading, and that's a good thing.

The story starts out with Emily (Malone), a girl in her late teens who just dropped out of college, reluctantly returning to her father's farm to try to get her life together. She is a few months pregnant, and plans on keeping the baby, even though the father is a politician who doesn't want anything to do with it. Her mother died when she was young, and she has a very awkward relationship with her father. Upon her arrival, she notices that her father's sheep are acting rather strange--they appear to be viciously fighting over a weed that is the byproduct of their neighbor's corn. After witnessing a sheep being born with only two legs, she decides to investigate this corn and its weed byproduct, and learns that it is an experiment in genetic engineering. After hearing about the death of a friend's newborn baby, who regularly ate lamb, Emily realizes she has to do something to put a stop to this. This will entail standing up to the big corporation that is testing the corn, her employers, and ultimately, her father.

This is a darn good movie, anchored by a terrific actress. Malone, who also served as associate producer, has described this microbudget film as "guerilla film-making." While it is obviously low budget (this is most evident in the silly fast-paced scenes that are ill-fated attempts at producing scares), the performances are exceptional. There are a few other flaws, including hit-or-miss sound (especially in the final scene), as well as unsatisfactory pacing and story structure. The movie starts out slow, and that works to build fear, but then it suddenly jumps to rising action and climax. While it seems silly that the lead character jumps to far-fetched conclusions based on a few things she sees, it sort of fits with the story. This movie is just as much about environmental horror (think Larry Fessenden) as it is about a girl's struggle with family relations, and the discrimination she faces as a pregnant woman. The ostensibly silly tagline for the film, "It is not nice to mess with Mother Nature," actually fits in with the recurring theme that motherhood and maternal instinct plays here. The personal and political are masterfully intertwined in a way that is rarely captured in movies today.

While "Corn" isn't a horror movie in the traditional sense, it does sort of work like a cross between "Rosemary's Baby" (including various creepy dreamlike sequences) and "Erin Brokovich." So if you are looking for a movie about crazy killer sheepies, you aren't going to get that here, regardless of what the DVD cover implies. If you are looking for a low-budget but well-made dramatic environmental chiller with a feminist bent, then check out "Corn." My Rating: 7.5/10

This movie has to be the absolute worst film I have ever seen in my life. The premise of the movie was already just completely moronic, but the acting and the further plot development of the movie just made it absolutely arm-gnawing. There were some points in the movie where it seemed like suicide would be just as good as the movie, but I just had to keep reminding myself that it would all be over soon. It was like a bad retarded dream. Whoever made this film should be barred from any cognitive thought for the rest of their lives. Just do yourself a favor and if you see this movie for rent, get something else. Anything else. Whatever you do, do not allow yourselves to give the bastards that made this movie more money. They have to be stopped.

I think this movie had some potential, but after the scene with the sheeps and the little boy it was little much. And by "little much" I mean not much at all. There was no conclusion only creepy townies trying to make out the only normal girl to be crazy. I give props to Jena Malone for trying to be a B-Movie star, but she really could have done without this one. Some things were never really explained...the blood on the bed in the dream sequence before she throws up...maybe it was supposed to be her mothers. Who knows. The only thing I really enjoyed was the dream she had giving birth to the legless sheep calf. Nice second use of that prop. The female struggle in this movie was appropriate though. Maybe if she would have been Julia Roberts with bigger boobs the townspeople would have taken her more seriously.