Children of the Corn II: the Final Sacrifice

5/10

In 1984, people all around the world were shocked by the insane film "Children of the Corn."  The brutal nature of the movie was unlike any before, and it made a lasting impact on the cinema for decades to come.  Who would've ever thought that the film could have a sequel? I honestly didn't; but in 1992 this became true with "Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice."

This film begins in a basement, as a couple of men walk down for investigation. As they come into the basement, they discover multiple gored bodies of adults. This beginning was cool, because more people were beginning to find out about what these children are doing.  It will never live up to the introduction of the first though, because that was a shocking five minutes that I will never forget. 

The film then goes to the center of town, where people(including some of the children) are being interviewed.  Just by looking at these kids, you can tell right away that they are evil.  In these next few minutes, we are also introduced to a father and his son. Their names are John and Danny Garret. The two of them have a very hard relationship, because of the fact that both of them are hardened by the fact that John had Danny when he was 17 years old. John is trying to get a story about the killings, and the two of them decide to stay in the town for a little bit. Another character that is introduced is Micah. He is a young local, and John and Danny stay the night at the inn that him and his sister own. Micah starts out good, but he is cursed, and he becomes the new leader of the corn. Ryan Bollmann was cast very well as Micah, because he has a very good way of giving his lines in a very evil way, and he even has a dark look to him.  He was not nearly as frightening as Malachai or Isaac, but he was definitely a refreshing character.  

One thing that I noticed about this film was that it was trying to be much more of a mainstream film. There is a romantic subplot with Danny and a local girl named Lacey, and later a romance between John and Angela.  I think that in some senses this worked, because instead of a constantly depressing movie like the first, you have those moments to make you forget, and then complete be shocked the next moment.  Another part of this mainstream quality it's an increase in jokes.  The funniest is when Danny is told, "these kids watch too many horror flicks." I really love thee kind of jokes, because bring up the genre in a horror movie, and even if it has been done many times, it's still funny. 

One of the things I really like about this film is that they upped the gore big time.  This movie has so much blood in its killings, and it's absolutely shocking.  One of the best scenes of this is when Micah uses a voodoo doll to make a man bleed to death out of his nose.  This scene has gallons and gallons of blood, and it's one of the most gory scenes I've ever seen. The only thing I can say negatively about the increase in graphic violence is that it makes the killing less terrifying. In the original, the offscreen violence made your imagination flow more as to what might be happening, but in this you lose that mystery. 

I feel that the acting in this film is a little weak in this film.  A lot of the actors like Paul Scherrer(Danny) and Terence Knox(John), and Christie Clark(Lacey) are super likable people, but you can just tell that their performances were thrown together. It's quite apparent that they just strictly went from the script, because it shows that every line had been practiced to be perfectly like that. While this is there job, I like when an actor can be more convincing, and give the feeling that I am watching real life. The worst actor of the film was definitely Ned Romero as Frank Redbear.  I feel that he might as well had the script in his hand, because not at one moment did I feel he was doing anything but reading. His performance was so fake, and even though he was likable, I just couldn't even stand it.  As I stated before, Micah was done very well, and most of the other children were great too. They do such a great job of being mindless drones, and they give off a very creepy performance.  It bothers me a little that teenagers were light years better than veteran actors, but I guess for this film it's okay being the film is all about them. 

Being a sequel, it is very hard to stay true to an original without giving a déjà vu.  I feel this film did that at some points, but it also did a good job with being different.  There is a whole different plot line, being this one is about an investigation, rather than just two people being stranded.  Some of the plot lines are quite absurd though, especially the whole poison corn thing.  I do like that there is some talk of how the children are becoming this way, because even though we got a glimpse of it in the first, we never truly understood.  In this film, they tell some more of these details, and it's a good way of being different. 

This film was still pretty low budget, only costing about 900,000 dollars.  This was more money than the original though, so there was some more room to do crazy things.  The killings are much more than just stabbing, and they are more in the field of houses falling on people, fires, telekinetic powers, etc.  While this is cool, I really liked the simplicity of the original. It made the film much more terrifying, and this one reminds me more of Wes Craven's killings, which are much more humorous. So while this isn't a weakness by my standards, it's also not a strength, and I wish they would've kept it a little more simple. 

The last quarter of the film is super intense, and it really gets the heart rate going, just like in the original. The fields are surrounded by fire, and the pressure that the protagonists go through is thrilling as can be. The problem is that it the fate of Micah is EXACTLY like Malachai and Isaac. I don't just mean that he died, but he died EXACTLY like them.  I really wish they could've changed it up a little, because basically I just watched the same ending in a lower quality movie. Then to make matters even worse, the last 30 seconds of the film is about the cheesiest thing I have ever seen. I was hoping that the ending would be better than the original, because it left us not understanding why it was even put in, but this was that multiplied by a thousand.... 

Overall, there was some entertaining factors in this film. There was a lot of gore, and some really great scenes.  I just could never say that this film was even close to the original. It lost a lot of the quality in the acting, writing, and originality, and I can only call it mediocre at best. Horror fans should watch it for the kills only, but other than that there is not much to look forward to.