So Bad It's Good Movie Review: Children of the Corn 2: The Final Sacrifice

Children of the Corn 2: The Final Sacrifice

Directed by David Price

Written by A.L Katz, Gilbert Adler,

Starring Terrence Knox, Paul Scherrer, Ryan Bollman

Release Date January 29th, 1993

Published January 31st, 1993

Children of the Corn 2: The Final Sacrifice is a bonkers disaster of a horror sequel. Produced 8 years after the original Stephen King adapted horror flick, the film is laughably out of touch with even the minor pleasures of the 1984 film. Comically inept director David Price, the son of the head of Dimension Studios at the time, starts bad and builds one unintentionally comic scene after another until the whole thing crashes off the rails in a beautifully unintentionally hilarious train wreck.

Children of the Corn 2: The Final Sacrifice begins in Gatlin, Nebraska, the setting of the original, Children of the Corn, where a group of children are being rescued. Somehow, 8 years later, law enforcement caught wind of what happened in Gatlin. Rather, they heard all of the adults had died and figured they should rescue the supposedly innocent children of Gatlin. I think that's what is happening but the comic ineptitude of the direction of Children of the Corn 2 makes it appear as if the kids boarded a bus in their new hometown and then immediately got off that same bus and joined new families.

Meanwhile, journalists are covering the carnage in Gatlin, specifically a newsman and his camera operator who stop for a moment to give our protagonist a hard time. Terrence Knox stars in Children of the Corn 2 as doughy, sweaty reporter John Garrett, a tabloid journalist coming to cover the story. Our TV journalists mention that Garrett is a disgraced former TV reporter but that is not something that will ever come up again or be remotely important to his 'arc,' to use a phrase that barely applies.

After acting like High School bullies, the TV guys head to a nearby cornfield to shoot some B-Roll. This is the filler material you see editors use to transition from one part of a story to another. There, in one of the great unintentionally comic moments in this rather brilliant unintentional comedy, Corn comes to life and kills the TV guys. Stalks of literal corn come to life and use their sharp leaves to slice the throat of the cameraman while another corn stalk launches itself like Poseidon's Trident through the window of the news van, impaling the reporter.

It's as if whoever wrote this opening sequence hadn't seen the original movie and believed it was literally about killer corn stalks. Oh, and this NEVER happens again in the movie. Yeah, the movie employs actual Corn as the slasher villain in one sequence and then never uses this motif again. It's cheap schlock of the highest order, a bit of complete nonsense that is so tasty in its unintended brilliance that I can't help but admire how awesomely stupid this sequence is.

Back to our protagonist, he along with his son, played by Paul Scherrer, are staying in the same neighboring town that the kids of Gatlin have been brought to. In fact, they are staying at a Bed and Breakfast with Micah (Ryan Bollman), who is the new leader of the Children of the Corn cult. It is Micah who now carries out the wishes of He Who Walks Behind the Rows. This essentially boils down to wearing black and having his voice pitched in a funny overdub intended to make him sound possessed by a demon. It's quite funny, especially when his sacred robe looks like a cozy Snuggie that he cut the arms off of.

The ineptitude of the scripting and direction of Children of the Corn 2: The Final Sacrifice is a perfect example of that sweet spot for so bad its good movies. It's so bad you might think it was done intentionally but so obvious that it comes from a lack of care and talent that it becomes kind of poignant. Poignant in that you almost feel bad laughing at the effort that went into creating something so very, very, unintentionally funny.

There are so many great so bad its good moments in Children of the Corn 2: The Final Sacrifice. A famous one finds the titular child cult menacing an old woman in an electric wheelchair. The kids have an R.C car and somehow, Micah uses his dark magic to hack the woman's wheelchair so that he can control it with his remote control. Micah rolls the poor old lady into the street where she is hit by a large truck. This creates a remarkably funny visual in which a very obvious dummy in an electric wheelchair goes flying through a plate glass window, interrupting a bingo game. That 'Wheelchair Old Lady' is not a meme is a missed opportunity for our entire culture.

The makers of Children of the Corn 2: The Final Sacrifice appear to be working from at least three different scripts cobbled together into one. One film has a journalist investigating bad corn that creates a toxic gas that makes people think there is a demon in the corn. The second script is intended as a sequel to Children of the Corn and features the kids as the killers. Then there is a script that is just a lame teen romance in which the son of the tabloid journalist falls in love with a local girl and the two nearly have sex on top of downed corn stalks in what cannot be a comfortable position.

The film also features the single most needlessly sweaty sex scene and an ending that is bananas in terms of the straight up ludicrous racism involved. I'm going to spoil it here because it is just too crazy not to talk about it. So, if you want to jump off the review and go watch this So Bad Its Great classic, jump now...

About halfway through Children of the Corn 2, the tabloid guy, Garrett, gets a Native American spiritual guide, a local College Professor, Dr. Frank Red Bear, played by Ned Romero. Dr. Red Bear informs Garrett about the toxic corn but also tells him that God is working to punish the wicked via the murderous children of the corn. Then, the two are kidnapped and nearly killed when the local sheriff, trying to cover up the bad corn, tries to murder them and frame the corn for the murder. I kid you not, the corn is framed for murder. Thankfully, our heroes escape but not for long.

The bad corn, has nothing to do with anything. The kids and their demon friend are the baddies and they've randomly decided to kill the supporting female actors in the film. This is so our heroes can rescue their love interests and our Native American friend can sacrifice himself to save his new white bread friends. Indeed, he does save them before succumbing to death by arrow to the gut. Because, yeah, it had to be an arrow.

Doubling down on the accidental/incidental racism however, once our heroes have vanquished the Children of the Corn, through punching and corn stalk spears, they pay tribute to their Native American friend by giving him a Viking Funeral. They stack his body on a pile of corn and light him on fire. Keep in mind, there are child corpses and body parts just off screen that they are not going to do anything about apparently, but yeah, they burn their new friend's body.

Never mind the fact that the character has been established as a college professor who likely has a family and friends of his own, an entire life where he didn't know this small group of white people, his body is burned by his new friends as a tribute to him? Then, because we need to cover all of our stereotypical bases, the Native American man becomes a ghost in full Native American headdress and a costume from a 1940s western so that he can provide a mystical, magical drawing to close out the movie.

Children of the Corn 2: The Final Sacrifice is the subject of the latest Everyone's a Critic 1993 Podcast. available to subscribers of the Everyone's a Critic Movie Review Podcast. Myself and my co-hosts, Amy K. and M.J laughed so hard throughout this movie and the podcast. It's genuinely one of my favorite experiences watching and talking about a movie. Children of the Corn 2: The Final Sacrifice is such a bonkers disaster of a movie that I kind of love it. It deserves to be remembered as one of the great So Bad It's Good Movies of all time. Check it out and listen to the Everyone's a Critic 1993 Podcast wherever you listen to Podcasts. We had a blast talking about it and I think you'll enjoy listening to it.

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