October Horror Movie Challenge 2018

Italian with subtitles. Aka “ Operazione paura”

A coroner travels to a remote Carpathian village to meet up with a newly arrived inspector to investigate the death of a local girl before the superstitious villagers can bury her as just another victim of the curse that has befallen them. When the inspector receives a hot tip about the Baroness Graps from the burgomeister, the coroner and his science student sidekick are left to figure out the mystery surrounding the rash of suicides and accidents that continue to claim the lives of those foolish enough to utter the name of the Villa Graps or its residents.


There is literally no exposition until the end. Valerio Valeri plays the creepy little wide-eyed girl Melissa whose presence always seems to cause hysteria and death - I honestly thought she was a vampire until the reveal. I think she has one line in the entire movie and that’s just her name. However, despite the sparse storyline, there are some remarkable shots in the middle of the movie and the set design is gorgeous.

AKA: The Horrible House on the Hill -or- Peopletoys
Three couples convene together at a cabin in the woods for a snow-filled romp while a quintet of murderous sociopathic children trudge uphill towards them.

The opening third of the movie is just the kids climbing out of a car wreck that they presumably caused and then trudging through the snow while complaining. We get brief shots of backstory on the couples - the gruff father named Papa Doc (Gene Evans) and his manipulative bimbo girlfriend Lovely (Carolyn Stellar whose children, Leif Garrett and Dawn Lyn, played murderous midgets David and Moe respectively), the daughter Julie (Joan McCall) and her doctor beau, and an over-the-hill doctor (Sorrell Brooke) who’s angry about being passed over for a job and his conniving wife (Shelley Morrison). There’s not a lot of character development on either side and the audience knows these kids are bad news even before the first murder. It takes forever for the adults to figure it out despite the growing body count and, even when they do piece it together and make a pretty good plan on sticking together, they totally let Lovely go upstairs to take a bath - I assume she enjoys freezing baths because it was already established that the generator was shot and the water wasn’t being heated for the house, but ok... They didn’t even clear the house to make sure the kids weren’t still inside or couldn’t get in! The deaths are so dumb and completely preventable with just a smidge of caution. There’s some gratuitous nudity and a chick fight which is fine; Shelley Morrison’s Ruth carries the first bit with her comedic harrying wife routine and even her reaction to Harvey’s death is pretty stellar comparatively. Ultimately, outside of this review, I won’t remember this movie by the end of the month. Considering, for most of the cast, this was their only movie credit, I doubt very many people remembered it after leaving the movie theater.

A bunch of murderous midget cannibals terrorize East coast families for decades. After nearly a decade of silence for one remote Maine town, new murders occur, causing the local police department to pull a boozed up detective out of retirement. Can they track the cannibal kids down before they kill again?


No, they can’t. In fact, a group of snarling, dirty children and their blood spattered mama get the drop on Maine PD and kill them in gruesome ways. But it’s fun for the whole family as little Luke (Tommy Nelson) ducks and weaves with baby Melissa (Emma Messing) in order to save his mom (Ahna Tessler) and her bestie, Amy (Amy Hargreaves) from the pack of cannibals who descended upon their house. There are definitely some scripting issues - David (Andrew Elvis Miller) tells Amy that there was a naked 16-17 year old girl on the edge of their property and Amy asks if her tits were nice and if he invited her in while she was sleeping in the bedroom with their baby... Lots of manufactured rage not completely timed well from the detective and cops that deliver lines like they’re extras in a kid’s play. There’s a scene where kids bite a woman with Coke can dentures and there’s a little cannibal cunnilingus so that’s at least something. Best part still is when the baddies hold up an obvious doll in a plastic bag and a drunk mom says, "my baby?!" and we're supposed to play along that that's a baby. Budget schlock based on a real story that's been embellished and relocated - Jack Ketchum has a cameo.

AKA Daughter of Death -or- Bad Blood
When her mother dies at the hands of the grocery delivery man during an attempted sexual assault, Julie thinks she finally has her father all to herself. But then, daddy brings home a new mommy and a new little brother for Julie which displeases her to say the least. Will her new family members survive her scheming?


Of all the Electra complexes, this one is the creep creepiest! There’s a brief scene where Julie (Isabelle Mejias) watches her father (Anthony Franciosa) having sex with her step-mom (Sybil Danning) and she stands at the door like a creep, fantasizing herself in place of her step-mom. The acting is hammy and we’re left to wonder how Julie’s dad never once considers the attention his teenage daughter gives him is in the least bit inappropriate. The grocery delivery man’s demise is particularly gruesome, but the blood is too obviously fake so that detracts from the cringe factor a little. Other than that, this movie put me to sleep so there’s not a lot to recommend unless you’re an insomniac that enjoys brief tit shots and not-so-surprising twists.

Three women go into labor at the same time during a solar eclipse and the children all grow up together. Nearing their tenth birthday, the three kiddos bop around killing sexually active teens, overly suspicious parents, and too strict teachers. However, their deadly aspirations just keep falling short when it comes time to murder the babysitter and her pesky little brother!

Why don’t modern horror movies feature this much nipple?! There’s at least two full female frontal and a male butt. I’m not really watching for the nudity, but it’s really shocking what 70s and 80s horror movies got away with that not even the goriest of modern horror movies will touch. I’m sure there’s something to be said about the rating commission between then and now, but it’s still really strange how prudish we’ve become.
The kids are as cute as they are menacing and the kills rack up impressively without being too over the top. The only explanation we get is an astrological one - their sun charts say they have no empathy and that’s what makes them dangerous. It’s a fun flick, but the most I’m probably going to remember about it come next year is that the subtitles were really weird, like someone was translating it from another language.

When a stranger comes calling at a country home out in the middle of nowhere, the residents have good reason to suspect his intentions may not be as he claims. However, simultaneously suspicious and desperate for the approval of this strange man, the mother allows him inside to share a hot meal and a warm bed. Little do they know that their initial reactions would prove correct, but they harbor a secret not even he could have guessed.

This is a repeat view as I think I may have watched this during another Challenge and loved it enough to own it. Patrick Breen, as Nick, has a smooth veneer of a snake oil salesman as he moseys up in his seersucker suit and hat. He oozes tension and the house is on immediate alert, but the father, Matt (Richard Bekins) doesn’t want to seem unfriendly while also trying not to anger his wife, Marilyn (Betsy Aidem). Meanwhile, Gloria (Alexandra Chando) takes Nick’s measure and seems far too interested in his stories when they border the inappropriately macabre. Things really pick up when all the pretense drops and Nick reveals his true intentions and becomes enamored by the mystery and violence surrounding Gloria. It’s a cat and mouse game right up to the credits and I adore it to the end.

Tommy (Will Denton), a boy from a fundamentalist religious family has a recurring nightmare that he’s being buried alive by a demon. He’s shipped off to church camp and subjected to conservative views on youth culture and mixed gender interactions, constantly threatened with Hell should he even think of disobeying or questioning the community.

This view doesn’t really fit my theme of creepy kids, but it was a decent watch regardless. Bruce Davison plays Father Phineas, a priest on a mission to save Tommy from his doubts and keep him on the straight and narrow. However, no one really seems to be listening to Tommy when he pleas for help against the feeling of losing his mind and his pleas are all met with the answer that he needs to pray and obey. Now, we can debate whether or not the demons were real or a psychological manifestation of Tommy’s religious based guilt compiled with the suppressed grief over his favored grandfather’s passing, but, for Tommy, the demons are very much real and very much after him and that affects his actions throughout the film. I think it’s a very interesting read of what happens when malleable young minds are presented with restrictive and punishment-based religions.

Doing a favor for a friend, Lucy shows up to a babysitting gig where she’s told to stay upstairs and not have any interaction with the sick boy downstairs. Of course, when she runs out of new rooms to snoop through, she eventually makes her way downstairs and comes face to door to face with her charge for the briefest of moments. Unable to accept her good fortune and commit to a job that literally requires no effort or skill, Lucy plays amateur detective and decides to investigate on her own despite literally everyone telling her not to.

I want her to die. She’s simply too dumb to live. Skye McCole Bartusiak is a terrible actress, like first year acting student terrible. But, even with her melodramatic overreactions in almost even scene, the script doesn’t really do her any favors. I have the same issue with this as I did with the short, Giggle - stupid little white girl running around with absolutely no common sense or sense of self-preservation. It’s just lazy writing and it cheapens the whole genre. Here, my pain is your gain -- Spoilers! Mom took Jeremy to Peru where apparently he somehow became a zombie. Dad is “traveling”, but he comes home with a bite on his arm and tosses Lucy out. In the mad scramble to leave, of course Lucy drops her engagement ring. After repeated calls fail, she and her fiancee go over to the house and, through a hilarious comedy of bad decisions, Lucy’s fiancee and a cop get eaten by zombies. She’s rescued and taken to the hospital where they wheel the dead cop in front of her and she freaks as he rises up in all his zombie glory. The End. She got everyone killed because she couldn’t follow a simple rule. I hope everyone involved in writing this movie gets anal warts.

Frank and Lenore Davies wake and stroll over the hospital, informing the night nurse that their baby is coming with incredible calm. But this baby isn’t like their first - at 10lbs and a gigantic head, he spends his first few minutes outside the womb by killing all the doctors and nurses in the delivery room! The hunt is on as the body count rises.

I know it’s not supposed to be funny, but I laughed like a crazy person at this. The puppet is seldom seen beyond little flashes until the end, but, when it’s revealed, it’s so insane that it’s hilarious. I think I may have had a different reaction had I watched this while pregnant because it would be my luck that my kid would be a 10lb, gigantic head, fanged and clawed murderous mutant infant. John P Ryan is all 70s swagger as Frank Davies who is literally having the worst week ever - his newborn is an killer mutant and the cops refer to it as an animal that needs to be put down, his boss tells him to take his two weeks’ vacation right in the middle of a big account acquisition and then has his secretary clean out his desk, and his baby murders the family pet and his best friend! AND he got a parking ticket!! Sharon Farrell as Lenore can’t quite make up her mind whether she wants her baby or she wants to kill her baby, but she’s really proud of her husband’s wine collection and lamb dish! All the other players are forgettable. It’s cheesy good fun and I needed it after the last watch.

With the first New Founding Fathers of America president elected, Staten Island residents are provided an incentive to participate in an experiment which will allow them to purge all their anger in free criminal enterprise for 12 hours. The neighborhood drug dealing kingpin puts his people in protection mode while his ex-girlfriend deals with her unruly little brother.

I hate this series, but it’s the perfect bridge between my husband’s hatred for the horror genre and my willingness to compromise in order to watch a movie with him. He honestly thought they were action movies and I can’t blame him because there’s very little in the way of scares. This go-round, all the active purgers have glowing eyes as they put contact lenses in so that data can be collected and they can earn more money by participating. Of course, it all devolves into tiny group versus the military and the military always loses because the tiny group is inexplicably bad ass for REASONS. This series was boring halfway through the first film. And it doesn't even fit my theme so I'm watching two movies tonight just to make up for it!

As more and more cases of mutant monster babies are birthed into the world, the government finds new ways of disposing of the creatures before they have a chance to kill. Meanwhile, Jody and Eugene Scott enjoy a visit with Frank Davies (here called Frank Davis) and are given an alternative to having their baby executed on the off chance that it’s a monster.

The first movie was bad, but there was a comical element to it that made it good. The second doesn’t have that element and it gets tedious very fast. John P Ryan reprises his role as Frank Davies and, even though it’s only been four years between movies, he doesn’t look like he lived well in in the meantime; he's still got a lot of swagger though! The killer kiddies look great, but that’s to be expected from the legendary Rick Baker. The ending is a little meh, but it fits in well with the rest of the movie.

After a monumental court decision, the monster babies are sent to a tropical island to live in peace, but that doesn’t stop random looky-loos from stopping in for a visit and getting killed. When the judge dies, a new authority sends a cadre of scientists along with a couple monster daddies for good measure.

Michael Moriarty of Law & Order fame plays the monster daddy, Stephen Jarvis. He quips and teases and pranks on everyone from the lawyers to the scientists to the monster babies while seemingly being a really decent guy considering the fact that he doesn’t seek to capitalize on his infamy and, instead, suffers for it. He’s actually the only decent person in the entire movie as everyone around him either wants to kill or exploit the mutated infants. By adding Moriarty’s character, they capture a little bit of what made the first movie so good despite being so bad. Larry Cohen, the creator and director, said the story is a morality tale - would we allow monsters to live beside us if we knew they were sentient and depending on us not to exterminate them? I think man is innately curious and incorrigibly determined to conquer that which frightens him to the point that I completely buy the fact that people couldn't leave well enough alone and had to keep trying to hunt on the island regardless of the danger. It’s a good way to end the series. Next up is the remake!

Lenore Harker and Frank Davis are too crazy kids in love and are expecting their first child out of wedlock. When Lenore leaves school to settle in and play house with Frank and his wheelchair bound little brother, Chris, she goes into labor early and is whisked away for a C-section while Frank is blissfully unaware in the waiting room. Daniel is born amid death and destruction, but is otherwise a beautiful baby boy. Until he gets hungry...

It’s a remake. You can tell when it’s a living baby and when it’s not, the kills are ridiculously over the top, and it’s less about a mutant killing when it gets scared and more about a hungry cannibal baby. It’s lost all its campy 70s charm. The police don’t know it’s the baby and have a weird obsession with making Lenore, who was drugged while undergoing major surgery, talk to a therapist who can somehow force her to remember who killed everyone in the operating theater. No one has any idea that multiple people are being murdered so the baby goes undetected forever and it becomes more about Lenore’s slow descent into being comatose. I don’t even know why they have the little brother character as he’s given sort of a story line for why he’s in the wheelchair and it never gets explored at all. I think there’s more filler stuff about the boyfriend than there is about mutated killer baby. It’s just not a good remake.

A true crime novelist moves his unwitting family into the very house where someone murdered a family of four and kidnapped their young son. After the local sheriff’s office extends their formal welcome, Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke) finds a box full of Super 8 films in the attic which lead him to believe the murders were committed by a serial killer who has been killing since the 1960s.

The recorded deaths along with the childish drawings and the flashes of Mr. Boogedy make for a creepy movie. I wasn’t entirely impressed on the first watch, but I’m enjoying the second watch a bit more for some weird reason. These movies rely heavily on a soundtrack that is pervasive and brooding which sets a tone of suspense. Maybe it’s more effective the second time because I’m watching for the subliminal flashes of the Mr. Boogedy character which means I’m more invested in each scene. The story isn’t exactly original and I’m sure it makes great parody material if those type of lazy comedy movies were still in fashion. Or maybe it’s more effective because I can now relate on a personal level - I saw the original in 2012 when it first came out and I had been living with the Hub for 2 years by that point so, if he was the sort to kill me, he had ample opportunity and still hadn’t managed to do it. Now, I have this little person in my home who throws temper tantrums and sometimes tries to bite me, covering me in bruises when I’m not fast enough to dodge him. It’s enough to send shivers up my spine to think I could so horrendously screw up in raising him that he could grow up to murder us both in our sleep... Yay, parenting! But Ellison really is a douchebag for moving his family into murder house.

When Deputy So-And-So fails to save the Oswalt family, he makes it his personal mission to stop the chain of murders by burning down each and every murder site. Unfortunately, a mother and her twin boys occupy the latest house as they flee from domestic violence. The children taken by Bughuul seem particularly interested in Dylan as they make him watch their home movies every night.

I don’t know why I wasn’t impressed with this series when I first watched it because it is legitimately creepy. It’s predictable and falls into horrific tropes, but it still manages to be fairly creepy. I’m not a fan of showing the ending at the beginning, but this does a good job of keeping the audience in the dark up until the very end. I was expecting more out of Zach, but I guess them’s the breaks, kid. The ham radio was a nice touch - as someone who is mildly creeped out by EVP, it definitely does the trick! However, that being said, the ending doesn't really make sense and really just serves as another jump scare which is kind of cheap. We get to learn more about the mythology surrounding Bughuul and, if the producers stay true to their cash grab sequel tendencies, we're sure to get more in the nearby future.

Flemish with subtitles. AKA Welp.
Sam is not like the other scouts, but he tries hard to fit in despite his background. When the cubs leave for a weekend in the woods with their scoutmasters, Akelah and Baloo, Sam finds himself obsessing over the story of a werewolf boy named Kai told by the older men.

Shockingly violent, this film takes awhile to warm up before characters start dropping like flies. Unfortunately, this movie pulls the same ending at the beginning nonsense that Sinister 2 pulled, but, unlike Sinister 2 where the ending was given away along with a character death and there’s really very little left to guess at, Cub deliberately misleads the audience down a slightly different path than what ultimately happens and the reveal is pretty neat. There’s absolutely no explanation for the baddies, no elaborate word vomited backstory. There’s a hint at an explanation, but even that doesn’t really make sense in the end. I think I’m ok without an explanation - sometimes crazy people do crazy things. The kids are convincing, the scoutmasters are easy to hate for various reasons, and Maurice Luijten is fantastic as Sam. Fair warning, there's a scene where an animal is beaten to death, but he's a bastard so I didn't feel bad for him.

Burt and Vicky are just your average premarital fornicators and, when they accidentally strike a young boy with their car, they discover murder is afoot and go in search of a phone to report it. The creepy old gas man says to go the 19 miles to Hemingford, but Gatlin is only 3 miles away and getting closer with every turn! Too bad Isaac rules Gatlin with an iron fist as the voice of He Who Walks Behind the Rows.

I could’ve sworn I watched the first movie before, but, after watching it here, I can honestly say I’ve only seen bits and never the full movie. Man, Courtney Gains (plays Malachai, Isaac’s enforcer) is lucky he grew into his face; he is an ugly teenager! Unfortunately, John Franklin (plays Isaac) is not so lucky, but he turns it into a positive by doing a lot of voice work and is later Cousin Itt in Addams Family Values which is cool.
Most of the movie comes across as believable. Ok, there’s a demon possessing this boy who comes to town and convinces all the kids in town to kill their parents and then systematically rewrites religion so 19 year olds give themselves to the demon who’s now living in the corn. Those who flee are considered traitors and outsiders are hunted down and destroyed as sacrifices. It’s a decent little kiddie cult flick. My problem comes with the ending and how so many children and adults alike are fast to completely abandon their fanatical faith in the face of logic. I’m sorry, but the mind actually protects itself against that sort of cognitive dissonance. But ok, maybe the religion had run its course by then seeing as there was a shift in the balance of power and some might not have agreed with it and were shopping for a new church at that point. Either way, that remains my only real complaint right now, but it is early...

The surviving children of Gatlin are brought to Hemingford and the residents there take them in amidst the media circus. One media vulture arrives late to the party, but is just in time to for his son to get a little one on one time with Micah, the new voice for He Who Walks Behind the Rows.

I hate this stupid movie and my review is going to contain spoilers because no one should be forced to watch it. An elderly school teacher pops up to proclaim the Gatlin children evil before yelling that she and her house were leaving - I noted that she should be called the Evil Witch of the Midwest and chuckled at my god awful humor. Then they make several more distinct references to The Wizard of Oz and the whole thing just feels lame and desperate. The script is so weak and it weirdly depends on just barely showing off a lot of jailbait boob for some reason. The ending makes very little sense and tries to be more meaningful than it is. The Native American character is a professor and, unless he shared his desired funerary arrangements with the junk media guy off-camera, there’s absolutely no reason for them to dispose of his body before alerting friends and family who might be just a smidge more appropriate in performing that ritual. Micah’s (Ryan Bollman) dialogue is just ridiculous in so many ways and it never gets any better. This is an awful sequel and the only upside is a lot of characters die after they overstay their welcome. However, it's our first hint that kids who speak for He Who Walks Behind the Rows might be possessed to begin with. In the original, Isaac only became possessed after he was sacrificed to the corn. But, in the sequel, Micah's face contorts into a demon's as he's about to be killed by the thresher and then the demon flees just as he's pulled in. None of this is explained so we're just left to assume that Micah was a normal kid possessed by He Who Walks Behind the Rows.

When their father meets an untimely end in the cornfield, Eli (Daniel Cerny) and Joshua Porter (Ron Melendez) are sent to Chicago to stay with their new adoptive parents. While Joshua fits in with new mom and neighbors, Eli sticks to his conservative ways and bonds with their new dad, a stock exchange broker with the means to distribute Eli’s new strain of corn worldwide.

This sequel is so quintessentially 90s that it should have a rap intro sung by Ice T. The kills are gory and the characters are mostly ok. Eli possesses supernatural abilities as the voice for He Who Walks Behind the Rows and it seems like he is actually the demon rather than just some kid who’s been lead astray. In the original, Isaac is a convincing leader and relies on Malachai as his enforcer, but he has no special powers. In the second, Micah attempts to sacrifice Danny and his father to the demon, but he is also possessed by the demon. In the third movie, Eli is the demon and also becomes an exaggerated puppet demon. It’s weird, but it makes for an ok sequel. This movie didn’t make me want to rage quit watching at least. Charlize Theron and Nicholas Brendon (Buffy's Xander) got their start with this one.

When the spirit of a long dead preacher boy returns for revenge, the local children all succumb to a terrible fever. After they recover, the children demand to be addressed by different names and begin exhibiting strange behaviors.

According to IMDB trivia, Josiah is supposed to be He Who Walks Behind the Rows; his backstory details how a group of traveling preachers took in an infant and raised him to be a child preacher, but, fearful of losing the money he brought in, attempted to halt his growth and eventually struck a bargain with the Devil to keep him young. Unfortunately for him, the townsfolk weren't so welcoming to the boy who never aged.
Surprisingly, I’ve seen this one before! While it severely lacks the number of adults deaths found in its predecessors, the deaths are nonetheless pretty gruesome. Unlike the previous movies, none of the children actually kill anyone - the deaths are all the result of weapons or other dangerous objects flying through the air and into their target. In the first movie, the children were lead to commit mass murder by their faith in Isaac and He Who Walks Behind the Rows. Second movie, Micah takes the place of Isaac and lures the kids in with his corn row sermons. Third movie, Eli has supernatural powers that cause all the kids to fall under his spell and, when he’s bumped off, the spell is released. In the fourth movie, the ghost of the child preacher, Josiah (Brandon Kleyla), infects the children and causes them to identify as the children of the townsfolk who killed him. This movie marks a change in tone as the kids aren’t all persuaded to kill through faith or spell, but are sort of possessed and quickly snap out of it once Josiah is properly dealt with by Grace Rhodes (Naomi Watts). Utterly forgettable, this movie can neither stand on its own nor stand out amongst the sequels.

When a mysterious flame erupts in a cornfield, Ezeekial (Adam Wylie) becomes the voice for He Who Walks Behind the Rows. After terrorizing the neighbors, the young congregation finally meets their match when a group of teenagers descend upon their fields.

This was one of Eva Mendes’ early roles and Alexis Arquette was still acting under her birth name of Robert. David Carradine has a small speaking role as Luke Enright, the adult puppet of Ezeekial. I think this is also the first time a female protagonist not only survives all manner of stabbing, beating, and chainsaw...ing while lesser characters are killed with barely a scythe slap in their general direction, she also seems to miraculously have insider knowledge that allows her to be in the right location for every plot reveal. Thank goodness for Allison (Stacy Galina) who manages to put out the fire that consumed professional firemen while mourning her brother and toppling the leadership of a cult! Whatever would we do without these super protagonists who walk through these movies as if in a perpetual daze. Some interesting trivia, according to IMDB, Fields of Terror is supposed to follow the second movie, The Final Sacrifice, the second movie.

On the cusp of her 18th birthday, Hannah Martin returns to Gatlin to find her birth mother, unwittingly setting in motion a prophecy that predicts more than just her arrival and waking Isaac from his 19 year coma. Can Hannah uncover her identity in time and escape the clutches of now adult adherents of He Who Walks Behind the Rows?

No. No, she can’t. Hannah (Natalie Ramsey) falls for every trap, even the painfully obvious ones. Stacy Keach plays the meddling doctor who leaves Hannah completely unguarded in a room full of sensitive patient documents and is nowhere to be seen when she stumbles upon Isaac (John Franklin reprising his debut role) and wakes him from his coma.
Here there be spoilers so, if you haven’t seen it in the almost two decades it’s been out, stop reading now.
I feel like, if the prophecy is all about the first born male child of a child mating with the first born female child of a child, and you’re the cult leader who’s determined to make one of them be your child, perhaps you should put a pin in the killing of every random adult who strays across your path and get it on with some cute cult bunnies until one of them pops out an heir. And, should some of the faithful beat you to it, well, there’s more than one perk to being a murderous cult leader - kill the preggo or stomp her until there’s no more threat to your legacy. Whatever you do, you probably shouldn’t completely ignore the first born male and pass him over for your own kid while still leaving the first born male as an important henchman cog in your plan. And, should that first born male be a hottie hot mchottie with an affinity for bad boy leather jackets and swooping in to save damsels in distress, maybe send him on sabbatical for the year of the prophecy? Conveniently forget to tell him he’s the first born male? Break both his legs right before she shows up and stick him on the second floor of a building with no elevator? Literally *anything* is better than allowing him to help her fulfill the prophecy and then have sexy barn shower time after your plan to force her to copulate in a dirty field with a guy who already has a girlfriend while surrounded by middle age and teenage cult weirdos. And, yay, Hannah escapes, but the seed is still planted! Except this is the 90s and girl can get that taken care of in a couple hours for a couple hundred dollars. But I’m sure that little detail will pop up in future sequels...

When her grandmother moves into a condemned building and stops returning her calls, Jamie (Claudette Mink) travels to the building and sets up shop in her grandmother’s apartment while trying to piece together the mystery of where her grandmother went. Meanwhile, the neighbor kids are causing an awful ruckus and corn seems to be springing up from every available surface.

This movie is an absolute mess. Jamie reports her grandmother missing which introduces her detective love interest and she meets all the neighbors long enough to get their stories before they die in spectacularly boring ways. One guy is literally scared to death in an elevator. One of the creepy girls who has been shouting “Kill!” at her, causing her to give the girl money for a House of the Dead video game and even her archaic cell phone, turns out to be her grandmother? Apparently, grandma was part of the Gatlin children cult, but left right before all the kids went up in flames. Sean Smith plays the boy preacher Abel and I can only hope that poor kid grew into his face because, Jeezy Petes! I’m just going to spoil every Children of the Corn sequel I didn’t like -- so there’s the showdown where she lets the killer kids lead her into the basement and her creepy girl grandma pops up and says in her now old voice that she tried to warn her and that she needs to run because the burned cult kiddies believe grandma should’ve joined them which means all the children from her need to burn too. She runs, they chase, she hesitates and does that “dog trying to find a comfy place to lie down” dance as she tries to decide if going outside is the best idea when all the kids chasing her are inside. She eventually makes a break for it, running straight into the corn which grabs at her and holds her down until Danny Detective Love Interest shows up, cuts the corn stalks and deflates them like balloons, and gets her away just in time before the whole building goes up in flames. Boom. This sequel is supposed to follow the fifth movie, Fields of Terror, which I equally disliked.

After a drought leaves the children of Gatlin starving, they turn to a boy preacher, Isaac, who preaches patricide and matricide, cutting the disease away from the crop. Years after Gatlin’s adult population is left to fertilize the fields, an unlucky couple cruises into Gatlin and bickers endlessly as they are slowly surrounded by the congregation of He Who Walks Behind the Rows.

I love David Anders in iZombie, but he’s here with absolutely zero of his trademark charm. Instead, he is a harried PTSD suffering Vietnam vet with a nagging shrew of a wife who calls him baby killer and rants about all the atrocities he must have committed while in the jungles of Vietnam. I am not a fan of domestic violence, but I would honestly advocate it in this case rather than advise therapy. Kandyse McClure’s Vicky is obnoxious and irritating and offensive and I honestly wish more bad things would have happened to her. However, David Anders’ portrayal of a US Marine needs a little work - what vet travels without a pocketknife and a contingency plan?? The original is better even though the kids in the remake are way more adorable.

A Vietnam vet returns home to find his homecoming party-goers murdered by the neighborhood children. This literally never comes up again.
Billy Drago is Preacher, a man who reluctantly lets in a couple who were stranded on the scenic route in somewhere California. When they go snooping around his land, the couple finds Preacher’s imported wife and her imprisoned son.

This is an okay sequel and a decent attempt at maybe an explanation? The movie is never clear on whether or not the one behind all the supernatural goings on is Preacher or the boy, but I think the closest I got was that He Who Walks Behind the Rows infected Helen/Oksana’s (Diane Peterson) child when he was in utero and they brought Him to California from Gatlin. And then Preacher collects strays and stranded women until the chosen child ages and is ready to pass the demon on to the next child? Maybe? In any event, it’s meh - not bad, but not great enough to leave a lasting impression.