Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering (1996)

Instant Favorite.

hyped garbage

Disapointment

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Moving back to her small Nebraska home-town, a medical student finds that the sudden series of child illnesses plaguing the town are caused by the rebirth of a dark figure attempting to corrupt the children to eliminate the adults and races to stop his plans.This one was far better than it should've been. One of the best aspect about this film was it's very high gore quotient as while there isn't all that huge of a body count, what's there is some of the more imaginative kills in the genre. These are particularly brutal and are even more impressive in that they are all involved in some big action scenes. The main attack on the family sets this off nicely while the other attacks on the doctor in the hospital wing or the later scene of the nurse investigating the incident for herself and meets a similarly gruesome and brutal fate there all gives this a pretty enjoyable aspect, and with some hallucinations thrown in it's quite a surprisingly gory effort. Aside from the fine gore, it's also quite fun when it goes for the interweaving of it all through the action and story lines found in this. The opening half's dealing with the strange virus and the mystery is pretty well- handled, giving a glimpse of what's to come while even throwing a surprise into it as well with the resurrection being quite chilling and bringing about the attack on the family that makes for an overall fun time. The last good part here is that the ending confrontation is full of action and suspense as well with the big confrontations at the farm and out in the cornfields for the big fire-filled approach which sends it out on a perfectly appropriate spectacle ending makes this one all quite fun. There really isn't a whole lot that really didn't work in this one, and it's got to deal with the fact that it rarely has anything to do with the other films. It discards the cornfields and the psycho-babble that the others dealt with and instead concentrates on a mysterious disease and the race to discover what it is. That is a wrong move for two reasons. It's already quite clear very early on what's going on, as an early murder and resurrection is dealt with in this manner that goes undiscovered for quite a long time to be truly believable. By the time it's been discovered, it's been so long coming that it's merely old hat by then which is very rare when a film is that far behind the audience as this one is. The other major problem is that it never once really put anyone that was supposed to survive in any danger of them possibly not making it. There's always a very easy way out of the suspenseful parts where they're supposed to be tortured, and it's always a shame when it's all over so quickly and easily. It's decent enough, but it's by no means all that spectacular entry in the series.Rated R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language and several scenes of children-in-danger.

All the kids in a town over night become feverish and have convulsions. The next day they start to become evil, change their names for those of kids killed long ago, and then start killing any adult in their path, in vicious and mysterious forms.Not only does this film star talented actresses like Karen Black and a young Naomi Watts, but the direction is very solid and great performances were given by everyone. Others have said this is the best film in the series (even outdoing the original), and I think that a case could be made for that. Certainly it is better than part three, which is ironic considering that this film was straight-to-video and part three actually appeared in theaters.The entire franchise is a bit silly, and how it resulted in so many sequels (seven?) is beyond me. The original is now considered a classic, but I am not entirely sure why. It seems like the idea was to make as many sequels as possible until the original had to be considered a classic by default.

Children of the Corn 4 is much more thought out than the rest of the sequels. The cut version that I have on DVD separates itself from the original story of "he who walks behind the rows" giving a fresh look to the franchise. A lot of question marks are raised throughout the beginning, but nothing is really answered until the later half of the film.Grace Rhodes comes to her hometown of Grand Island, Nebraska to take care of her mother June who is having nightmares of sick children. June has also become to paranoid to leave her front yard. In addition to looking after her mother, she has to take care of her younger siblings. June's nightmares also include a young boy dressed in a preacher like outfit, and we later find out his name is Josiah. Anyways, June's visions of sick children comes true. All of the kids in Grand Island start becoming ill with high fevers and pretty soon their teeth begin to fall out. And that's when some of the adults in town begin dying off in gruesome ways.The big plot reveal (told to viewers near the end of the film) is that Josiah was taken in by some travelling preachers as a child and eventually became a very gifted preacher. Over the years, Josiah never grew out of boyhood and stopped aging. The travelling preachers gave him over to darkness to stunt his growth, but when word got out, they abandoned him. Josiah killed the preachers and then the townspeople burned him alive and sealed his remains in a well. Grace also finds out that Josiah can control all of the children in the town by finding a child like himself (a lie child). That child is Grace's "sister" Margaret. The lie surrounding Margaret is that she is actually Grace's daughter whom Grace abandoned years ago. It's up to Grace to destroy Josiah and save the children. Children of the Corn IV is a step up from part III. The films itself looked a lot cleaner and sophisticated then it's predecessor and I liked the franchise returning to the rural setting. There were some gory moments and genuinely scary scenes which was missing from the third film. I recommend it. Acting was great (Naomi Watts), had a good story...definitely one of the better sequels in the franchise.6/10

***SPOILERS*** The 4th installment of "He who walks behind the Rows" who's never even mentioned, much less seen, once in the movie. We do have a corn filed in it that has really nothing to do with the plot but has the local town's sheriff Biggs of Grand Island Nebraska, Richard Gross, slaughtered in it while out at night looking for runaway Marcus Atkins, Lewis Flanagan III. Marcus went a bit nuts after he was infected with a mysterious illness that made him forget who he is and start thinking that he's in fact someone else. Like all the other kids of Grand Island who were infected by it.We have pre-med student Grace Rhodes, Naoma Watts, traveling home to Grand Island to visit her crazy mom June, Karen Black, and her 14 year old brother James, Mark Salling,and younger sister Margaret, Jamie Renee Smith, for the summer. It's then that Grace gets a job with the town physician Doc Larson, William Windom, whom she worked for before going away to collage. It's at Doc's clinic that strange things begin to happen with it suddenly being overcrowded with children who came down with high fevers and suffering from mercury poisoning. No one knows what's causing these strange maladies until we get the low down towards the end of the movie from the elderly and almost senile Nock sisters Jane & Rosa, Salle Ellis & Marietta Marich, about some boy preacher named Josiah who was kept young by his followers by stuffing him with mercury in order to stunt his growth.It's seems that the preacher boy was later burned at the stake by his disappointed, in him growing up, followers and is now back seeking revenge by getting the children of the town to slaughter all the adults for what they, or their parents and grand parents, did to him. There's also the side story to who's to replace this Josiah who's to come from the same background that he came from: In being abounded by his or her parents.Very confusing story especially in what the purpose in it is of showing grasshoppers or locust as evil messenger's of the devil without explaining why. We do in fact have some very shocking slasher, with the use of a scythe, scenes in it that makes the movie worth watching if you have the stomach to see them through. Even these scenes get a bit overdone with in one case poor Doc Larson who was cut in two earlier in the film getting shot to pieces by his assistant Grace, who didn't recognize him, with a shotgun as his other half, the bottom part of his body, was lying in state.***SPOILERS*** It's Mr, Donald Atkins, Brant Jennings, young Marcus's dad who finally finds the magic bullet, filled with mercury, that can put an end to this horror. Atkins together with Grace drives down to the old Spelling Barn where the possessed town children are holding a rally, or human sacrifice, in order to save them from themselves. Even though Donald did the driving through the corn field it was Grace who did the blasting with her shotgun who finally put an end to this bloody, with all the kids cutting their hands open and dripping their blood into what looked like a wooden punchbowl, insanity. That's until the next cornball "Children of the Corn" flick comes to video store of theater near you to start it all over again.