If you’ve ever watched a franchise slowly wither in the sun and thought, “You know what this needs? Another reboot no one asked for,” then Children of the Corn (2020) is absolutely your cursed harvest.
Kurt Wimmer’s take on Stephen King’s already over-farmed short story is the twelfth entry in a series that’s been milked longer than the actual corn subsidies in the plot. At this point, the brand “Children of the Corn” basically means “children plus fields plus decisions you’ll regret,” and on that front, the movie absolutely delivers.
Welcome to Rylstone, Population: Bad Decisions
The film takes place in Rylstone, a small farming town where the corn is dying, the adults are useless, and the kids have clearly never heard of therapy.
The crops are failing despite GMO and herbicide tinkering, which would be an interesting setup in a better movie. Instead, the adults decide to solve their financial woes by destroying the crop so they can collect government subsidies. Honestly, that’s the most realistic thing in the entire film.
Enter Eden (Kate Moyer), an orphan raised by the town preacher who looks like someone let Wednesday Addams read too many climate change articles. Eden is furious that the adults are killing the corn, which is apparently more emotionally supportive than any of them.
Meanwhile, Boleyn (Elena Kampouris), one of the local teens, comes up with a brilliant idea: a mock trial to hold the adults accountable. Because obviously when your agricultural economy collapses, you fix it with community theater.
She recruits Eden to help, which is mistake number one. Eden immediately hijacks the plan, turning the pretend trial into an actual murder festival. Adults get imprisoned and slaughtered, and the film gets very proud of itself for being “dark” while basically recreating a discount version of Midsommar with corn and less subtlety.
He Who Walks Behind the… Budget
The kids start sacrificing the remaining adults to a monstrous green entity called He Who Walks, which appears to be:
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Part forest god
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Part corn fungus
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Part “we spent all our CGI money on one shot, make it count”
He Who Walks just kind of… lumbers. It looks like a rejected boss design from a PS3 game that didn’t test well, but the movie insists it’s a primal, ancient force of nature. It’s less terrifying malevolence and more “Swamp Thing’s unemployed cousin.”
Eden rants about eradicating adults from the world, which sounds dramatic until you remember this is a town of like 20 people and most of them are already in the stalks. You don’t get the sense of a movement or mythology—just a bunch of kids LARPing as a death cult.
Boleyn vs. The Corn Industrial Complex
Boleyn, who we’re supposed to accept as the conscience of the story, gets knocked out during the carnage and wakes up to discover that Eden’s upgraded to full murder-zealot mode. The kids decide she’s no longer useful and plan to sacrifice her with a cattle gun, which is at least on-theme for rural slaughter logistics.
She negotiates a last request: a cigarette. You might think, “There’s no way they give the condemned teen a lighter and a highly flammable environment.” But fear not—this is Children of the Corn 2020, where every plot point is delivered courtesy of absolute idiocy.
Boleyn uses the lighter to ignite the super flammable GMO corn, and the field goes up like it’s been soaking in gasoline and exposition. The fire kills He Who Walks, Eden dies trying to save her corn god, and for a brief moment you think, “Okay, that was dumb, but at least it’s over.”
The next day, Boleyn returns to the fields—alone, of course, because who needs police, news, or literally any outside presence after a child-led murder-cult mass killing. She walks through the charred stalks, only to be ambushed and devoured by Eden, now transformed into a new monstrous creature akin to He Who Walks.
So the ending message is:
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Nature always wins?
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Children are the real monsters?
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Don’t trust orphans with access to agriculture?
It’s unclear. The movie just kind of shrugs and eats her.
Characters: Stalks With Legs
The performances range from “trying their best” to “I would like to speak to my agent.”
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Elena Kampouris (Boleyn) does what she can with a role that mostly consists of staring in disbelief and being morally outraged while surrounded by people making obviously bad choices. She feels like she’s wandered in from a slightly better teen drama and can’t find the exit.
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Kate Moyer (Eeden) at least commits. She’s small, intense, and delivers pseudo-prophetic lines with the certainty of a kid who has read exactly one Tumblr thread about nature revenge and decided to start a death cult. She’s not the problem; the script is.
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The adults—including Callan Mulvey and Bruce Spence—feel less like characters and more like future fertilizer with dialogue. They talk about corn, subsidies, and responsibility, but never feel like actual people. They’re there to be dumb, dismissive, and eventually dead.
You never really buy into the town as a real community. It’s more like a minimal set populated by meat puppets there to pad the body count and argue about agriculture until the kids turn them into organic matter.
The Message, Maybe, Sort Of
There are hints that the film thinks it’s about something:
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Environmental collapse
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Corporate interference in nature (GMOs, herbicides, etc.)
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Older generations failing the young
But instead of doing anything interesting with those themes, the movie uses them as thin wallpaper behind a pretty formulaic “kids kill adults” slasher. There’s no real exploration of how the town got here, no nuanced conflict between generations—just shouting, corn, and supernatural shrubbery.
It’s like someone started out trying to write “eco-horror meets folk horror” and then gave up halfway through and went, “Eh, just have the monster eat them.”
Horror, or Corny Carnage?
As a horror film, Children of the Corn (2020) mostly relies on:
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Loud noises
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Sudden attacks
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The vague promise of lore it never fully delivers
The deaths are occasionally nasty but never truly impactful. You don’t care enough about anyone to feel dread; you’re just waiting to see what elaborate corn-adjacent nonsense happens next.
The monster stuff is too sparse and too silly to be scary. He Who Walks doesn’t inspire fear so much as raise questions like:
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Why is it glowing?
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Why is it moist?
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Why does it look like a theme park animatronic that missed its maintenance window?
Meanwhile, the kids never feel truly terrifying in the way the original concept promised. They’re not chilling avatars of corrupted innocence—they’re just… annoying.
Final Verdict: Leave This Field Fallow
Children of the Corn (2020) isn’t the worst horror movie ever made, but it’s impressively unnecessary. It’s a reboot no one asked for, based on a story that had already been strip-mined by sequels, remakes, and late-night cable.
It has:
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An overcooked premise
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Underwritten characters
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A villain who looks like a rejected Goosebumps creature
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Themes that evaporate as soon as the credits roll
If you really, truly love the franchise and feel compelled to watch every single iteration, this one might qualify as “background noise while you scroll on your phone.” Everyone else would be better off rewatching the original, or honestly, just staring at a cornfield for 90 minutes. You’ll get more atmosphere, fewer plot holes, and roughly the same emotional payoff.
If nothing else, the movie does teach one valuable lesson:
When an angry child with messiah vibes starts talking about a mysterious entity called He Who Walks, maybe don’t give them unrestricted access to the crops, the town, or the runtime. 🌽💀
