It's actually mildly impressive that it took a whole eight years for a sequel to Children of the Corn to come out (although I am disappointed that its French title wasn't Horror Kid 2). But it wasn't until 1991 that Trans Atlantic Entertainment was formed with the purpose of producing sequels to several films that they had acquired the rights to that things got started. It should be noted that one of the other films that came out of this was Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth and that after this film, all future Children of the Corn films were direct-to-video (or worse, a SyFy sequel). All in all, it doesn't feel like the most auspicious background for Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice.
Picking up where the last film ended (although I think we can assume that it didn't take Burt, Vicky and the moppets eight years to get to Hemingford), the authorities have descended upon Gatlin and discovered why they'd not heard from anyone there for three years. With Issac gone, the surviving children all seem free from the influence of He Who Walks Behind The Rows, although all they can tell of what happened is "I saw the corn." Tabloid journalist John Garrett and his surly teenage son Danny arrive in Hemingford and end up rooming at the local bed-and-breakfast run by Angela Casual (yes, that's her actual name), who has also taken in Micah, one of the Gatlin children. He Who Walks Behind The Rows is still lurking around, however, and possesses Micah so that he - and his new enforcer Mordechai - can once again lead the children to slaughter all the adults in a blood sacrifice for the corn. While Micah starts to persuade Danny to join them as well, John teams up with a Native American anthropology professor to investigate what happened in Gatlin and discover a sinister plot by the townspeople of Hemingford that might turn everything on its head...
Here's what I don't get about Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice. We know that He Who Walks Behind The Rows exists. We saw him in the previous film. We even get to see from his point of view (in extremely low-budget Predator Vision) several times in this film. So why does this film bring in this subplot about toxic ergot on the corn that could be making the children go kill-crazy? (Technically a spoiler, but hey, it's hardly world shattering.) If they had brought this up in the first movie, and perhaps made He Who Walks Behind The Rows more ambiguous, then maybe it would have worked better. But just dropping it on us in this movie and devoting a good amount of the film's second act to discussing and discovering it does nothing for the plot whatsoever - unless the film thinks its audience has been snacking on lead paint favoured popcorn. We know that the ergot has nothing to do with anything, except as part of the insidious plan that Hemingford has to... make people sick from their corn and somehow profit from it? Yeah, it's a big mess, and trying to puzzle it out just makes my head hurt.
This sequel is considerably more gory than the previous film - partly because it is a 90s horror film and partly because, as I noted above, it came from the same people who made Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth. One death in particular is particularly bloody, as Micah whittles a wooden voodoo doll in church and causes a fellow parishioner to basically haemorrhage out of his entire head. Elsewhere, corn stalks are propelled through people, doctors are stabbed to death with their own syringes, and in the film's climax, the corn demon is defeated this time by a combine harvester (and fire). Eris knows what they're going to use in the next film. Agent Orange, perhaps? On the other hand, it has some ridiculous attempts at comedy deaths as well - an elderly woman named Ruby West (get it?) is crushed by her own house, leaving just her feet sticking out from under it - har-de-har-har. It falls even flatter when the evil kids kill her cat before flattening her, just in case you weren't already on board with hating them. Later on, another elderly woman in an electric wheelchair is propelled through a plate glass window into a bingo hall, and I think that's supposed to be a black comedy moment as well - except that it's not actually funny, just over-long and obvious.
If ever there was a pictorial example needed for the definition of "unnecessary sequel", then Children of the Corn II: the Final Sacrifice would be a shoo-in. It's cheap, derivative, unoriginal and catering to the lowest common denominator for a lot of the film. Its human antagonists of Michah and Mordechai don't have nearly enough screen time and/or screen presence to be anywhere near equal to Issac and Malachai from the first film (although they do try, giving Michah a two-tone voice to try to up the creepy factor), and the effects haven't really improved much in eight years. It's true that this was the case of a lot of horror films from the 90s, but honestly, this one is worst than most. And the fact that every sequel following this was direct-to-video pretty much means that any light at the end of the tunnel is going to be an oncoming train...
1.5 out of 5.