Children of the Corn (1984)

One or two creepy kids in a horror movie can be scary. Get a whole bunch of fifth graders together though, and they’re somehow less scary. It’s weird. If they’re all coming after you, it feels like you can just shove your way through them. Or trip them. Or do the “hey, what’s that behind you?!” trick and then run away while they’re looking in the other direction. Kids are stupid. And that’s one of the problems with Children of the Corn, an unfortunate ninety-minute expansion of a Stephen King short story that you could read over a couple of traffic lights. It’s the touching tale of a road-tripping couple (Peter Horton and a strikingly cute Linda Hamilton) who stop in a teensy Middle American town where the kids have taken over, killed every adult and now serve an invisible mystical being that they call He Who Walks Behind the Rows. It’s scary stuff if you’re the biggest wimp in the world. Not one of the better King adaptations. You might also call it a shitty variation on The Wicker Man. For corn enthusiasts only.