It's the last day of February and also the final entry in the Children of the Corn series, praise be to Eris and to He Who Walks Behind The Rows (it never helps to hedge your bets, that's all I'm saying). And of course, the franchise decided to wait until its (current) final instalment to have its most explicitly direct-linked sequel in Children of the Corn: Runaway.
Ruth and her 13-year-old son Aaron live their lives as drifters, never spending long in one place and most of their nights sleeping in the bed of their old truck. Ruth has a good reason for all this - she was one of the Gatlin children all those years ago, except that after her boyfriend and Aaron's father (Malachai) was made to sacrifice himself to He Who Walks Behind The Rows, she set fire to the cornfields while all the other kids were in them and went on the run with her newborn son. When they end up stuck in a small town in Oklahoma though, Ruth decides to try to settle down, even getting a job as a mechanic thanks to a sympathetic garage owner. But something strange is going on 0 Ruth keeps seeing and hearing crickets and then falling into fugue states, and she keeps seeing strange children around the town and dead bodies that may or may not be flashbacks to her own childhood in Gatlin. Oh, and a small blonde girl is apparently going around the town and killing people. Has the cult of He Who Walks Behind The Rows returned for Ruth and Aaron?
Children of the Corn: Runaway was written by Joel Soisson, who was the director of Children of the Corn: Genesis, a producer on Hellraiser: Revelations and the writer for Hellraiser: Hellworld, among other sins. On the other hand, it was directed by John Gulager, who created the Feast trilogy and also directed the very tongue-in-cheek Piranha 3DD, and so I had some hope that this film could somehow climb above the dross that's been the later chapters of this series. Also, as I mentioned above, Runaway is actually a direct sequel to the original Stephen King story (and the 2009 remake, as the Ruth in the 1984 version was far less inclined to set fire to any cornfields), and if you've read the story or seen the 2009 film you'll remember that it ended with Ruth's vision of burning the cornfields and He Who Walks Behind The Rows in retaliation for forcing Malachai and the others to sacrifice themselves early. I'm a sucker for actual continuity being carried through from one film to another, as people here regularly should know by now.
So I went into this film with a modicum of hope that things would be better than, say, Revelation or Genesis, and for the first half of the film things did indeed seem to be looking up. Ruth is a sympathetic protagonist who's been through a lot, and you can understand that she's got some PTSD from the events of Gatlin that make it difficult for her to settle anywhere or trust anyone. At the same time, she's also tough and independent and takes no crap from anyone, even getting that mechanic job as much through a mix of her own skills and stubbornness as from Carl the garage owner's kindness to her and Aaron. So when she starts to see signs that the children in the town seem to be falling under the influence of He Who Walks Behind The Rows, we feel for her and understand her panic and determination to keep her son safe from it and not let what happen in Gatlin happen anywhere else. A redemption arc, basically.
And then, at about two-thirds of the way through the film, I started to get suspicious. (And from here on, there are some pretty big spoilers, so proceed at your own risk.) Runaway drops some pretty heavy hints as it goes that what Ruth is seeing might not actually be happening, what with her fugue states and obvious hallucinations of past murders, and those points and a couple of others strongly suggested that things weren't going to turn out well for Ruth in the end. At the same time, however, we've got this diner waitress called Sarah who acts really creepy towards Aaron, to the point where it becomes very clear that she's down with that Babylonian corn god who forms the backbone of this franchise. This creates a problem narratively speaking: either Ruth is crazy and it's all in her head, or He Who Walks Behind The Rows really is back. You've got to choose one or the other - having both just destroys any impact your climax/denouement could ever have. And guess what option Runaway takes? Ruth's entire journey through the movie, no matter how tragic it becomes, is unbearably cheapened by the "revelation" that, yeah, it was all in her head and that she was the murderous little blonde girl all along, but that He Who Walks Behind The Rows is back anyway (and it's never explained how or why he's in or using Sarah, another full-grown adult) and is there for Aaron to start the cult back up again.
A perfectly good psychological horror, if a little hokey and obvious, is ruined by the need to shoehorn the supernatural Big Bad in at the last minute (and believe me, I never thought I'd be complaining about the inclusion of He Who Walks Behind The Rows, especially not after Genesis). Ruth's journey and struggle were far more interesting than retreading the old "evil child preacher" plot once more, and bringing it in so abruptly after building up Ruth's story for 70+ minutes literally made me write, "Fuck this film," in my notes when it occurred on-screen. Really, that could have been my entire review, except I try to explain why I like or dislike something and because I do try my hardest to keep this as close to PG-13 as possible.
So there you have it. The Children of the Corn series ends not with a bang, or a whimper, but with a dollop of wet slurry that smells strangely like processed cheese. At least now I can delve into some films I really want to review.
1 out of 5.
Comments