“He Who Walks Behind the Rows Deserves Better Agents”
There are bad remakes, and then there’s Children of the Corn (2009)—a film so aggressively bland it makes actual corn look like a nuanced performer. Directed and written by Donald P. Borchers, the man who produced the original 1984 cult classic, this Syfy Channel reboot proves that lightning doesn’t just fail to strike twice—it sometimes crawls out of a field, coughs up a scarecrow, and begs you to turn the TV off.
This movie isn’t scary. It’s not thrilling. It’s not even memorably bad. It’s the cinematic equivalent of watching damp cereal turn soggy—slowly, inevitably, and with mounting irritation.
A Reaping of Regret
The film opens in 1963, with the town of Gatlin, Nebraska, experiencing a drought. Apparently, the corn has gone bad, and so have the local kids. A pint-sized preacher named Isaac claims that “He Who Walks Behind the Rows” has spoken to him, demanding the deaths of all adults. Because nothing screams divine authority like a nine-year-old with a Bible and a superiority complex.
The children promptly slaughter every grown-up in town, which should’ve been terrifying. Instead, it plays like a Hallmark Channel Halloween special directed by someone who’s afraid of blood. There’s less tension here than in a PTA meeting.
Fast-forward twelve years to 1975, when the apocalypse apparently stalled somewhere between the Nixon resignation and disco fever. Enter our protagonists, Burt (David Anders) and Vicky (Kandyse McClure)—a married couple who hate each other almost as much as the audience will soon hate them. They’re on a road trip to save their crumbling marriage, because nothing says “romantic reconciliation” like rural Nebraska in the mid-’70s.
Then they hit a kid with their car.
Burt and Vicky: Driving the Plot Into a Ditch
Burt is a Vietnam vet with emotional trauma and the personality of a used Band-Aid. Vicky is his long-suffering wife, whose defining character trait is “complains loudly in every scene.” Their chemistry is less “love on the rocks” and more “gasoline and sandpaper.”
After running over poor Joseph—whose throat had already been slit (because subtlety is for movies with budgets)—Burt stuffs the body in the trunk like it’s a Costco return and decides to go find the nearest police station. Vicky, being the voice of reason, suggests not driving into a ghost town populated entirely by homicidal orphans. Burt, being a man in a horror movie, ignores her completely.
They arrive in Gatlin, which looks like the set of Little House on the Prairie after an exorcism. The streets are empty, the buildings are crumbling, and yet somehow, the most lifeless things in town are still the main characters.
Isaac and Malachai: Diet Versions of Villains
Remember the creepy child preacher Isaac from the original? The one who looked like a demon accountant trapped in a boy’s body? Well, here he’s played by a literal child (Preston Bailey), and the effect is about as menacing as a school nativity play. He’s supposed to channel ancient evil, but instead he channels “kid who got kicked out of Sunday school for snitching.”
His second-in-command, Malachai, fares slightly better—mostly because he looks like he might’ve wandered off the set of High School Musical: Midwest Blood Cult Edition. Daniel Newman tries his best to be intimidating, but it’s hard to take a guy seriously when he’s named after a brand of baked goods.
The result? A leadership duo that couldn’t scare a scarecrow. Even He Who Walks Behind the Rows seems embarrassed to be associated with them.
The Pacing: As Slow as Growing Corn
You’d think a movie about killer children and a demonic corn deity would have some energy. Maybe a little suspense? A jump scare, even? Nope. What we get instead is a meandering slog through beige fields and beige dialogue, punctuated by occasional outbursts of yelling and bad CGI.
The editing feels like it was done by a man who fell asleep halfway through the timeline. Scenes drag on so long you start rooting for dehydration to take the characters out.
There’s one moment of unintentional comedy gold when Burt hides in the cornfields and begins hallucinating about Vietnam. Because, of course, when in doubt, insert a war flashback—it’s cheaper than tension and twice as confusing.
The Gore (or Lack Thereof)
This is a Syfy Channel movie, so don’t expect much in the way of blood. Or effects. Or effort. The “kills” mostly happen off-screen, which might’ve been forgivable if the sound design didn’t resemble someone smacking a watermelon with a pool noodle.
At one point, a character gets stabbed, and the result looks less like a mortal wound and more like a ketchup packet malfunction. Meanwhile, the film’s supposedly fearsome deity, He Who Walks Behind the Rows, manifests as a glowing orange ripple under the soil. Imagine Tremors meets a Windows 95 screensaver, and you’re in the ballpark.
Vicky’s Fiery Exit (and My Applause)
Eventually, Burt’s poor life choices catch up with him. Vicky, left alone in the car, is surrounded by children who start dismantling the vehicle like it’s a group science project. She honks, screams, and waves a gun—somehow missing every single child in a ten-foot radius. Malachai stabs her, the car explodes, and she’s mercifully freed from both her marriage and the movie.
It’s the first moment of genuine relief for the audience.
The Corn God’s Revenge: Now With Extra Boredom
From there, Burt spends what feels like forty-five minutes wandering through identical stalks of corn, hallucinating about war crimes, ghosts, and his dead wife. Eventually, the plants themselves attack him, which, admittedly, is the only time the corn displays any actual initiative.
He finally stumbles into a clearing, finds Vicky’s corpse (still more expressive than he is), and gets devoured by He Who Walks Behind the Rows. Not that we see it. The screen just goes dark while Burt screams like a man who just realized his filmography includes this movie.
The Ending: Even the Corn Looks Tired
Isaac scolds his followers for failing to kill Burt, then lowers the cult’s maximum age from nineteen to eighteen, because apparently God loves arbitrary HR policies. Malachai dutifully marches into the cornfields to be sacrificed, while his pregnant girlfriend Ruth cries and contemplates setting the whole place on fire—something the director should’ve considered doing to the script.
The final image is a scorched field of corpses, and honestly, it’s the happiest ending possible.
The Acting: Harvest of Ham
David Anders, best known for Alias and The Vampire Diaries, tries valiantly to make Burt’s descent into madness compelling, but he’s working with dialogue that sounds like it was copied from a survival pamphlet.
Kandyse McClure, who’s usually terrific (Battlestar Galactica fans know this), spends most of her screentime alternating between shrieking and looking constipated with rage. The only performer who seems to understand the camp potential here is young Alexa Nikolas as Ruth, who delivers her lines like she’s one bad sermon away from a musical number.
Donald P. Borchers: The Farmer Who Forgot to Water His Crop
As both writer and director, Borchers had a rare opportunity to update Children of the Corn for a new generation. Instead, he stripped it of everything that made the original creepy—the eerie stillness, the surreal religious fanaticism—and replaced it with… exposition.
Every line explains something no one cares about. Every scare is telegraphed like a weather report. And the few interesting ideas—Isaac’s god-complex, the social collapse of Gatlin—are buried under miles of monotonous dialogue and corn stalks.
Final Thoughts: The Real Horror Is Mediocrity
Children of the Corn (2009) isn’t just a bad remake—it’s a cinematic crop failure. It’s not scary, not funny, not even weird enough to be cult-worthy. It’s the horror movie equivalent of a tax audit: technically functional, utterly joyless, and guaranteed to ruin your evening.
Even He Who Walks Behind the Rows would probably skip this one.
Grade: D- (for “Disaster in the Cornfield”)
The only thing this film successfully harvests is regret. If you want to experience true terror, skip the movie and imagine explaining to Stephen King that you remade his short story for Syfy and forgot to include the horror.
