Les enfants du maïs

A young couple spend the night at a preacher's home, and soon begin to suspect that he has a child locked up in his barn. Can they save the child from this imprisonment?

Pretty much the nicest thing I can say about this film is that it features Billy Drago, who is a decent actor and under-appreciated. The makeup department did a good job making him look old and rustic, and he he has much less of an exotic look about him than usual.

That positive note aside, I am a bit confused what is going on with the Children of the Corn franchise. This one has very little to do with children and very little to do with corn. Some efforts are made to connect it to the series by attempting to offer a back story (presumably why this one is called "Genesis"). But it could be changed and not affect the overall story at all.

Obviously by stamping it with the Children of the Corn label, more people will rent the film and possibly even buy it. But it does the movie a disservice in the long run. I suspect that if the franchise aspects were changed slightly, this could have been a fairly respectable stand-alone story.

Sadly, it was not the last one made in the franchise...

I have to admit, I haven't followed the Children of the corn series up close, so I can't tell you, if this actually makes sense in the series. Than again Dimension doesn't seem to care, if they put a movie out there that isn't that connected to previous entries in a successful series (see Hellraiser for that). But this movie is nicely shot, has some interesting twists (though you can see them coming even before the scriptwriter put them down on paper).

In the end this doesn't add much to the horror genre, has the typical erratic character behavior (it's the grown ups who act like children, doing stuff they've been told not to do). The ending is weird too. You wonder why a certain character would accept "help" like that. But until that point you will probably have shut down your brain, just to save it. Good thinking ...

Children of the Corn... what a bizarre franchise. The first 3 followed a set storyline, and the rest (aside from 6) were just their own stories ala Halloween 3, sometimes with very minor mentions of previous entries. 'Genesis', the 8th film in the series, is quite good for the first half. Intriguing storyline involving a couple's car breaking down in the California desert, and they seek refuge from a weird preacher and his hottie Ukrainian wife. There's a child locked up in a shed behind the house, and it seems like a bizarre entity doesn't want the couple to leave the Preacher's house. For the first 40 minutes or so, the film tells a good, straightforward creepy story. Acting for the most part is good and credible. But then, things get extremely messy and confusing. Nothing is explained, the last half will have you scratching your head. Should I mention the horrible stock footage car crash? Yeah, that was hilariously bad, and makes a film that did a good effort of covering its' low production values for the whole film look EXTREMELY cheap. Good start, messy and confusing middle, horrible conclusion.

This is even worse compared to the previous movie that I reviewed. This is the only movie that doesn't have any children as the main focus with exceptions in the opening, dream sequence, and the ending. The story is nothing interesting to talk about and is rather boring. It's mostly the characters who get lost, go to a house, notice something suspicious, and get trapped. I don't even know why they made this movie like this and add nothing new to the franchise. The whole supernatural force isn't that effective because it mostly forces the main characters to stay in the house for no reason and feels unnecessary. Also, it spends a lot of time with exposition dialogue that gets boring quickly and isn't anything too interesting to learn about. And the movie has an anticlimactic ending to it. I am going to skip the characters because all of them are rather boring and aren't that interesting to talk about. And the acting itself sucks.

Children of the Corn: Genesis is the worst compared to the previous movie. I do not recommend this movie at all.

Right, well I am not on to the eight movie in the franchise, as part of my "Children of the Corn" marathon. I had never actually heard about this 2011 movie from writer and director Joel Soisson. But then again, I haven't been actively keeping up with this franchise, as it never really had much appeal with me.

But as I had the chance to watch the franchise here in 2023, of course I did so.

And I have to ask, why is this 2011 movie titled "Children of the Corn: Genesis"? A more fitting title would be "Adults of the Corn: Genesis", because this movie really steps further away from the lore and core essence of the franchise than any other movie have done thus far.

The storyline in "Children of the Corn: Genesis" was pretty straight forward. However, it wasn't a storyline that appealed much to me, especially since the whole killer-possessed-religiously-obsessed-children aspect of the franchise is nowhere to be found in writer and director Joel Soisson's 2011 movie.

"Children of the Corn: Genesis" goes one step further in terms of supernatural elements, and when the police officer was catapulted into orbit, I have to say that I was good and ready to call it quits. Yet I opted against quitting and carried on watching. And having sat through 80 minutes of this ordeal, I have to say that "Children of the Corn: Genesis" is a very weak addition to the franchise.

The acting performances in the movie were good. I was only familiar with Billy Drago, and he was actually the one carrying the movie with his performance as the very creepy and disturbing preacher character.

This 2011 movie just strayed too far from the essence of the franchise and hardly feels like it belongs in this particular franchise at all.

My rating of "Children of the Corn: Genesis" lands on a three out of ten stars.