Thursday, October 9, 2014

Movie Appraisal: Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror (1998)


At least I know that these movies are getting worse and worse with each installment. That's a small comfort. I realize it and understand that I am in the hellish domain of this franchise of movies, and there is no escape for me. Save yourselves, I say. Do not venture on this path as I have. There is no quality here, only pain and misery and very mediocre movies as far as the eye can see.

And that's the problem. The movies aren't BAD per se. They're not horrible and painful to watch. There's nothing about them that make me angry or make me want to punch my hand through the DVD case. These movies are just boring. They make no attempt to be interesting, exciting, or engaging, instead dwelling in this realm of utter mediocrity. I barely remember this movie even though I just sat through it all of ten minutes ago. I barely remember the characters, the plot, or the situation because the movie had no passion to it (and a plot that made very little sense besides).

Should I tear this movie down? I guess a little, but how much can I really say? This isn't a scary movie. There's nothing here to be frightened about. There's about one decent gore shot in the entire film, and it just so happened to be the most engaging moment in the entire film, when the two most interesting people in the movie, David Carradine and Fred Williamson die together. Spoiler alert, I guess.

The movie involves a group of "teenagers" who I thought were college kids or even older than that until I read the synopsis. These teenagers go to do something with their dead friend who has been cremated. I think they're putting him to rest, but why in the town they get to? I have no idea. Well, two of the friends die immediately. And this bears mentioning: why the heck does this first "teenager" who dies have a thing about putting blow-up dolls everywhere? I frankly do not understand at all, but I found it utterly fascinating and more than a little bizarre. I wouldn't have minded an entire movie of him plastering blow-up dolls around town for reasons only his addled mind can comprehend. Even more than that, I seriously believe that this guy has a bottomless bag full of these blow-up dolls. When those kids killed him, they actually killed the creepiest magician in the world: the one who can only conjure up blow-up dolls.

Is that it? That's basically all I took away from this movie.

I don't know. Some people die. The children of the corn come back again and this time He Who Walks Behind the Rows doesn't walk behind the rows, but is instead a fire monster captured in a silo. If the silo were a pokeball, He Who Walks Behind the Rows would be a pokemon. He never leaves. He doesn't really do anything at all but burn a bit throughout the movie. Ezekial, the prophet kid of this movie, is one of the worst prophets yet. I think the fourth movie is still worse about that simply because most of the movie is without the major prophet, but Ezekial is quite ridiculous and more than a little annoying.

What else? What else?

I laughed out loud when Eva Mendes implied she was under eighteen. She totally looks about twenty-five, all of the "teenagers" do. And mentioning Eva Mendes, why does this movie seem like it's shot like a softcore porn movie? Something about the way Eva Mendes in particular is shot makes it seem like at any moment she's going to remove all her clothes. I don't know. Maybe it's just me, but it really feels like it's shot like a porno rather than a horror movie. Nothing about the movie is even slightly scary. Even the moments in the dark just seem like a softcore flick.

I think I've said everything I'm going to say about this movie. It's pretty awful and completely forgettable. It's worse than the last Children of the Corn movie just because most of the characters here are also extremely unlikable on top of being bland and uninteresting. At least Naomi Watts and father of the year in the last movie had something going on. This movie has about two minutes of David Carradine, one good scene, and Fred Williamson being cool for about a minute. And that's all I have to say.

Avoid this movie.

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