The horror film that scared me the most when I was a kid was an independent film called Retribution (1987). It was about this guy who looked like Harold Bishop from Neighbours who had this psychic connection with his dead twin brother and there was a painting of a devil’s face, or something. I haven’t seen it in for years, and when I rewatched it, it was pretty dull but something about it scared the shit out of me as a kid. It was directed by Guy Magar who also directed Children of the Corn: Revelation and this is literally the most interesting thing I can say about this seventh entry in the Children of the Corn series.
Like the third film, Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest (1995), this one moves from the usual rural location to a more urban area. Not that we would know, since it mostly takes place in one condemned apartment building that has a cornfield next to it. I don’t know if corn fields are something you find in urban areas of the Midwest, but I would guess not.
One of the inhabitants of that condemned building is an old lady who is killed (I think) by the maize spawns, which causes her granddaughter, Jamie, to come and see what’s up. The building is overrun by annoying children in Amish-like attire. That’s always a bad sign.
The film is frightfully dull, and the plot is so thin and unremarkable that I am having trouble writing this, even though I finished watching the damn thing just a few minutes ago. There is one interesting death scene, in which a woman is killed while bathing when the infamous children throw corn which spawns into killer corn stalks. That was fun. Michael Ironside is in a few scenes (presumably against his will). It has a brownish green hue, like so many post-2000 cheap horror flicks. Some bad CGI. Wooden acting.
It’s the first in the series that screams “cheaply made straight-to-dvd trash,” and that’s for a series that has been straight-to-video since the second sequel, so you know I mean it when I say it’s bad.
