Metacritic reviews

Though shot in four weeks on a low budget, Stephen King's Children of the Corn, while not on a par with "Carrie," sure beats "Christine," "Cujo" and "Dead Zone." It's terse, tense and the sound is effective as auditory terror.

For those who take Mr. King seriously, this is high-proof King corn, which is to say it has a kick to it even though it hasn't much taste.

It’s ragged round the edges, but then Fritz Kiersch is working with a budget Roger Corman would laugh at, and he does a good job.

The idea that there is evil under the sun and amongst the verities out there in the clean-living heartland is not exactly new to fiction. Neither is the one about the bad seeds, the homicidal children. In combination, however -- the combination in Children of the Corn-- the elements have a perverse novelty. [19 Mar 1984, p.C6]

By the end of Children of the Corn, the only thing moving behind the rows is the audience, fleeing to the exits.

The couple drive into town, body in the boot, looking for help, but they won't find any in the script, which totters from one cliché to the next, eventually disappearing up its own cornhole in a conflagration of cheap FX.