Children of the Corn: A New Generation of Terror | FilmInk

Reflecting the current climate, the NSW shot Stephen King adaptation saw director Kurt Wimmer replace the religious fanaticism of the original with something much closer to home.

The Children of the Corn film series has been a consistent presence in horror cinema for decades.

Based on the Stephen King short story of the same name that was first published in the March 1977 issue of Playboy, and then later featured in King’s 1978 collection of short stories titled Night Shift (from which movies such as Cat’s Eye and Maximum Overdrive were also adapted), Children of the Corn would first be adapted to the big screen in 1984 to mixed reviews yet box-office success, becoming a cult-classic that resulted in numerous sequels.

Now comes a new version of the classic horror tale from director and screenwriter Kurt Wimmer, the filmmaker of Equilibrium and Ultraviolet who returned to the director’s chair for the first time in 14 years.

Children of the Corn stars Canadian actor Kaye Moyer (When Hope Calls) as Eden Edwards, a psychopathic 12-year-old girl in small town Nebraska who leads a deadly cabal of children in a murderous uprising against the corrupt adults.

Filmed in NSW, Australia, in March of 2020 during peak COVID pandemic conditions, Children of the Corn also stars American actress Elenis Kampouris (Sacred Lies) alongside Australian talent Callan Mulvey and Bruce Spence. For Wimmer, filming this new version of Children of the Corn was a product of going back to the source material and then updating it for a new generation of horror fans.

“I looked at (Children of the Corn), and obviously they had made a lot of remakes. I haven’t watched any of them… but I read the short story and (it) really focused on the adults, and it’s really the kids that are more interesting to me, because they are the gunpowder, they are the fuse that lights this keg,” said Wimmer. “But I looked at it, and I mean this in the best possible way: this is not a story. This is a template. An eternal and universal template just like Oedipus Rex or something like that. Stories will be told over and over again, because they’re applicable from generation to generation, and the reason that we can tell it again is that we can retell in the context of the new generation. There is no reason why a 17-year-old today should have to go back to 1984 to watch Children of the Corn, and I also don’t think they will get it, because back then, with the original, there was some kids who were religious kids, and I don’t think that is really relevant anymore or frankly interesting anymore as it might have been back then.”

When reimagining King’s original, Wimmer found himself on the side of the villainous children, comparing the inspiration for their violence-drenched-revolution against the adults – whose decisions destroyed their once prosperous town – with that of today’s younger generation of environmental activists fighting for a better future.

“(Children of the Corn) is highly metaphorical because corn, if anything, symbolises the earth. Only wheat, perhaps, symbolises the earth better than corn. And children are the embodiment of the future,” said Wimmer. “So when I look at it like that, it was very plain then why children would revolt and kill their parents, because I look around today and obviously there is a lot of people making decisions, policy decisions, for a future that they are not going to be in, but children who are going to be in that future don’t have a say in it and I think that’s kind of upsetting and younger people are becoming more and more aware of the fact that they have been rendered politically effete and (adults) are making decision that are going to affect them. So, I can see how this template lays very well, I thought, over what’s going on today, and if I were a kid, I would probably kill my parents too.”

A theme that has transitioned from King’s short story and the original film is that of fanaticism, and while this latest incarnation of Children of the Corn does not delve into the heavy religious aspects of the previous films, the theme of fanaticism – as told through the concept of a monster that has grown from a broken society and a broken people – is relevant in Wimmer’s version of this classic horror story, even though the filmmaker is, again, hesitant to paint the character of Eden and her followers in a negative light.

“Yeah, it’s to catch the tiger by the tail. It’s a snowball rolling down hill and just getting bigger and bigger. But, I have to say also, this was not accidental,” said Wimmer. “The tragedy was the causing of the adults. They destroyed this legacy of corn these simple towns had for generations, and so they adults were frankly responsible for it. Now, of course, they are suffering for what they did, and as a consequence of it, they are cheating on their spouses, and fighting with each other, and in-fighting, etc. And who suffers they most? Well, it’s the kids who have to sit and witness it, and the kids played in those corn fields. That was their playground that is all now dying around them. When it comes to the question of fanaticism, I’m not sure that’s quite the word, because I think the kids have a great point. I think somebody has got to do something about it. I was always on their side. They were the heroes of the story to me, not the villains.”

Wimmer had to contend with his own unique villain during the making of Children of the Corn in the form of the COVID-19 pandemic, which during the film’s 2020 shoot in NSW, was at its peak. Yet Wimmer remained undeterred, and with the help of his producers, safety manager John Heeney, and CreateNSW and Safe Work NSW, Children of the Corn became the first production in the world to safely shoot a feature film during the COVID pandemic and do it to completion.

“Every movie is hard in different ways, that’s for sure,” said Wimmer. “You know, weirdly the pandemic didn’t bother me. We started shooting in the first week of April back in 2020, so once we started, we were just making a film again. That’s it. But it was the weeks leading up to that when (then Australian Prime Minister) Scott Morrison closed everything down, and the world was closing everything down, and we actually didn’t know if we were going to pull the trigger and shoot, despite all the work in pre-production put into it. So that was the scary part, but once we got the cameras rolling, I was like, it’s another movie. They’re all tough. When you’re shooting in the corn with kids, it’s always going to be tough, and on a limited schedule.”

Children of the Corn will be available March 21, 2023 On Demand and Digital in the US.

Main Photo by Mark Rogers