It's been a while since my Catholic school education and my Christian Theology A-Level, but I am reasonably sure that Genesis comes before Revelation. Quite a fair bit before, in fact. Perhaps the bible of He Who Walks Behind The Rows does things in reverse though, because here we are with Children of the Corn: Genesis, a whole two movie after Children of the Corn: Revelation.
Tim and Allie are a married couple who have broken down in the middle of the Californian desert. With no other way of getting help, they knock on the door of the only house around to ask if they can use the phone. The old man who lives there, apparently known as Preacher, is cold and unhelpful to them at first but softens when he learns that Allie is pregnant. He allows them to use his phone and even stay overnight when they cannot get immediate help - although he cautions them not to go wandering around his property at night. It turns out this is because he has a small child chained and locked up in a building outside - a child that appears to have strong psychokinetic powers. Between that and the strange behaviours of Preacher and his Ukranian wife, it's clear that something sinister is going on there - but is it what Tim and Allie think it is and will they be able to escape it?
What is it about the later chapters in this series that somehow attracts decent and well-respected actors that end up being criminally under-used? We've had David Carradine, Michael Ironside and now Billy Drago. Although I guess in Genesis' credit, Drago does get more than a token couple of scenes as he plays the mysterious Preacher, whose connection to He Who Walks Behind The Rows is never really explained. In the opening scene, a young soldier returns from Vietnam in 1973, just in time for the children of Gatlin to ruin his homecoming party, and we later learn that Drago's Preacher is the old man version of this soldier... but since the titular Children were trying to kill him in that opening scene, it's not at all clear how he ended up in the California desert, running a (spoiler) mother-and-baby group for He Who Walks Behind The Rows. I know I say this a lot in these reviews, but it makes no sense.
then again, when you look at it this entry in general has only the loosest connection to the franchise's canon so far. Aside from the opening scene being set "20 miles from Gatlin, Nebraska" in "September 1973" the only other connection to the Children of the Corn canon is a single mention of He Who Walks Behind The Rows by Preacher during a rambling attempt to explain what's going on. Yeah, there's a child with supernatural powers locked in a shed, but we get two or three explanations as to how he got those powers and the kid doesn't even get any lines. He just throws a guy into the air (a trick he might well have learned from Toby circa Paranormal Activity 4), causes a Final Destination-esque car crash and spears someone through the back with a pitchfork. Oh, and apparently runs about the house at one point, leaving little bloody footprints for no reason and having a poltergeist temper tantrum whenever Tim and Allie discuss getting the hell out of there.
I was left with a lot of questions after watching Children of the Corn: Genesis - the most prominent of which was probably, "Why do I keep doing this to myself?" but others included, "Why are there now adults involved in this killer child cult?" "Why aren't we in Nebraska any more?" and "Does this even count as a Children of the Corn sequel?" That last one is because, if you removed the opening scene and the single solitary mention of He Who Walks Behind The Rows, you wouldn't even be able to tell it was part of the franchise. It would just be a generically bad thriller about a creepy old man running a cult for... reasons. It doesn't even have much of a body count, and the very few deaths we do see are CGI and unimpressive - which, considering the film comes from "Dimension EXTREME", makes me question the usage of the word "EXTREME". It's just dull and confusing all around. And the title doesn't even make any sense.
0.5 out of 5.