Children of the Corn: Revelation (2001) - 2/10
A woman searching for her missing grandma is stalked by two mysterious children.
Claudette Mink stars as Jamie, a woman who travels to Omaha, Nebraska after her grandmother Hattie (Louise Grant) stops returning her calls. Jamie investigates her grandmother's apartment building, finding it run down and on the verge of being condemned, with the remaining tenants all receiving eviction notices. Hattie isn't in her apartment, so Jamie files a missing persons report with Detective Armbister (Kyle Cassie), who recommends Jamie stay at her grandma's apartment in case she returns home. However, while there Jamie finds herself being stalked by two creepy children (Jeffrey Ballard and Taylor Hobbs), as well as a mysterious man in black (Michael Ironside)...
Children of the Corn: Revelation was directed by Guy Magar and written by S.J. Smith. The seventh Children of the Corn movie and the fifth direct-to-video entry, Revelation was originally intended as a remake before eventually being adapted into another sequel. How does it fare?
It's bad... really bad. I knew I was in trouble once I saw
this film's poster, and in even more trouble after a jarring opening scene that is followed by
blurry opening credits where the sound is bizarrely mixed down so low that I thought I accidentally muted the video. Needless to say, five minutes into the movie I was extremely concerned.
However, the first 20 minutes actually weren't too bad. The set up and premise are sort of like a weird mix between Evil Dead Rise (2023) and Hellraiser: Deader (2005), with our protagonist Jamie traveling to a creepy apartment building intent on solving the mystery of her grandmother's disappearance. Jamie is a shallow character who I think is supposed to be a writer (she mentioned a deadline at one point, yet has no computer or writing materials), but at least her motivations are clear. Either way, we follow her as she investigates the nearby town... which is supposedly Omaha, but only contains a couple alleyways and a single convenience store. Let's just say it's the outskirts of Omaha, okay?
After a decent-ish opening act, the movie goes downhill like a runaway train. As Jamie investigates the boring mystery of her grandma's whereabouts (which the audience learns the answer to at least 30 minutes before she does - great mystery!), the miscellaneous apartment tenants are picked off. And let me tell you, these tenants are horrible: a drug dealer, an exotic dancer, a paranoid weapons collector, and a wheelchair bound man with Tourettes Syndrome. Most of these characters are played over-the-top (I'm not sure how else they could be played), but the movie tries to play things straight, which as you can imagine lowers the overall quality of the scenes. Speaking of low quality, most of the music in this film is public domain. There is
some music credited - all to artist Steve Edwards - but for the most part the film only has generic incidental music. I think the opening credits were mixed so low because it was probably some random public domain song.
Revelation keeps trying to remind you this is supposed to be a Children of the Corn movie by including corn in bizarre ways; there are cornstalks outside the apartment, corn cobs are lobbed at characters a few times, someone bites into corn and there is blood inside, etc. This is such a weird tactic because the actual corn is a very small part of what this franchise is about. It would be like if they made a Friday the 13th sequel and kept trying to incorporate the weekday of Friday into the main events. And this on-the-nose usage of corn can't cover for the fact that this isn't
really a Children of the Corn movie. The city of Gatlin and "He Who Walks Behind The Rows" get name dropped towards the end of the movie, but for the most part there is no series lore in this entry. The movie instead feels like (but isn't) a ghost story. For most of the run time there are only two children, one of whom looks like the
I Like Turtles kid. Oh yeah, another 82 minute run time for this Children of the Corn sequel. In this case I'll call the movie mercifully short.
Maybe things would have been more tolerable if Children of the Corn: Revelation had upped the gore, but there's not much in this film. Most of the deaths are very tame, with the most extreme kill happening off camera. A lot of the deaths are flat out cheesy, with one character dying of a heart attack (I think?) and another being killed by rows of corn in their bathtub (a horrendously edited sequence). Adding insult to injury, the special effects are unacceptable and are probably the worst part of this movie. There's one death in the middle of the movie that involves a computer effect and is supposed to be sad, but is instead absolutely hilarious. Later on, we have moments with computer generated explosions and fire, as well as with CGI cornstalks rising from the ground. These effects look like they were done using early 2000's Windows Movie Maker, and so many of them occur in rapid succession during the film's climax that you can't look past them. The beginning of the film isn't great, but because of how awful the end of the movie is, this photo does Revelation more justice than any written review ever could:
Overall, Children of the Corn: Revelation is another horrible horror movie with the word "Revelation" in its title. Despite being made only two years after its predecessor, this film feels completely disconnected from the rest of the franchise and the most pointless overall. I think a lot of people would give this movie a "1", but in my opinion plenty of lower quality movies exist (i.e. 2014's Leprechaun: Origins). Either way, whether I rate it a "2" or a "1", the movie is trash and is comfortably the worst of the first seven Children of the Corn movies. I could not find any budget or earnings information for this direct-to-video sequel, but it's worth noting the Children of the Corn franchise went into a 10 year hiatus following this film.
