Three Films Make A Post: A Campfire Legend of Flesh-Eating Terror!

Holidays (2016): This holiday (all the Western holidays, I’m still waiting on Christian Orthodox horror, Chanukah, and so on, and so forth, though thanks to Hong Kong we’ll never need to be without a Lunar New Year horror fi´lm) anthology starts off strong, with a first half of segments that are female-centric, weird as all get out (I have no words to describe Nicholas McCarthy’s Easter bit) in all the best ways and not as dumb as V/H/S style horror anthologies often are. After that, unfortunately, there comes a dreadful Kevin Smith thing, and two five minute jokes that sort of work but aren’t exactly the place you’d want to end a film. On the other hand, Sarah Adina Smith’s and Anthony Scott Burns’s pieces in the first half are so strong, it’d be worth watching the film for those two alone.

Retribution (1987): Guy Magar’s late 80s low budget horror about a depressed artist attempting suicide by jumping off a roof only to survive and add “astral body possession through burned to death gangster” to his list of problems is a bit of a frustrating affair. It’s a film that’s often too subtle and interested in its characters as relatable human beings instead of fodder for the killing scenes to be your typical piece of 80s horror, but on the other hand way too interested in your typical 80s horror nonsense (neon and disturbing haircuts and overlong gory kills) to work as the subtle and psychological horror film the other half of it attempts to be, ending up in an awkward half-way place. It’s too bad too, for there aren’t too many places elsewhere in 80s horror where you will find actual sympathy for (and a bit of a romantic idea of) the left behind and losers of this world, a competent yet empathic female psychiatrist who isn’t falling in love with her patient, and Dennis Lipscomb in a pretty great leading performance?

The Green Inferno (2013): This on the other hand is exactly what you’d expect from Eli Roth making a cannibal movie: it looks really nice, but is utterly thoughtless and vapid. It is of course the sort of stupid film that thinks it’s oh so clever and can’t help but grin smugly in your face. Unlike the Italian cannibal films, which at least came by their bad taste in an honest attempt to do the Roman circus thing, this is tasteless in that pointless sort of way I can only tolerate from three-year-olds playing with their own poo.

In short: Children of the Corn: Revelation (2001)

For reasons only known to her, Journalist Jamie's (Claudette Mink) grandmother Hattie (Louise Soames) has moved into a dilapidated apartment building in a town in Oregon. Jamie doesn't understand her grandmother's move at all, so when she suddenly stops hearing from Hattie, she flies on over to investigate. Hattie sure is gone, and the state of the building, peopled by eccentrics, and situated nearly inside of a corn field as it is, just provokes more questions for Jamie.

There's something very wrong with the place, yet still Jamie decides to stay, in the hopes of finding any clues to her grandmother's whereabouts. What she finds instead are pale, creepy, teleporting children who really like to stare at her, a creepy priest (Michael Ironside wasted in an expository cameo), and a creepy cop (Kyle Cassie) who seems more interested in getting into her pants than in doing any police work (though the film doesn't actually seem to realize that its supposed male romantic lead is a deeply unprofessional creep, and instead thinks he’s, well, the male romantic lead). At least, the copper informs Jamie of an interesting fact about her grandmother - she was the only surviving member of the mass suicide of a children's cult. Jamie smells a revived cult; we smell supernatural revenge.

Soon, the obligatory series of murders starts, and it is quite clear to anyone except Jamie that she is supposed to be their final victim. And really, she should be the only victim, seeing how nobody else who dies has anything to do with the supernatural revenge wreaked upon her family.

I can't believe I'm on the seventh Children of the Corn movie now, but thus are the ways of the horror franchise gods. Fortunately, this one's not as bad as Isaac's Return. In fact, I can't help but think that what makes Revelation at least watchable is its only very tenuous connection to the original mythos beyond the obvious ones of children, corn, and supernatural shenanigans, which frees the film from having to try and clean up the mess of the films that came before it. Again, as with some earlier Children of the Corn films, I wouldn't be surprised at all if the initial script wasn't supposed to be a part of the franchise (such as it is) at all.

In any case, Guy Magar’s film is far superior to the last Children outing, which of course is rather easily done simply by making a film that contains an actual plot, an escalation of dramatic events, and supernatural happenings that do have a visible connection to each other as well as said plot. Magar clearly knows these simple basics of making a horror film, and is even able to add a few mildly atmospheric scenes taking place in obviously cheap yet effective sets, turning this thing into something I can at least accept as an actual movie.

Of course, Revelation's plot is rather lacking in revelations, its scares are not all that scary, and its ideas are generally not very interesting, but given the franchise it’s a part of (for better or worse), and its nature as a direct-to-DVD feature from the early 00s, I'm satisfied by it actually being a competent, coherent, and more or less entertaining movie. Low expectations, it turns out, can be very useful.

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