- Directed by Kurt Wimmer
- Written by Kurt Wimmer, Stephen King
- Stars Elena Kampouris, Kate Moyer, Callan Mulvey
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 33 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HK41isxFC34
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This could either take place years after the first movie, or it could be a reboot leading to the first movie taking place in the future. There’s some strong performances and good effects and issues you have to work not to nitpick. It’s decent but not great.
Synopsis
We open on Rylstone Children’s Home, where a little girl watches Boyd stagger in from the cornfield. He picks up a knife and a gun and says, “I don’t want you to cry anymore, Eden. Don’t worry, nothing ever really dies in the corn.” Boyd then stabs a man and kills all the adults in the children’s home. The police pump in knock-out gas to get Boyd to calm down. We see lots of dead kids on the floor.
We see the headline that fifteen people died inside. Pastor Penney comes to the police station to talk to Eden, the only survivor of the incident. He wants her to come live with him. As credits roll, we see the town of Rylstone is looking pretty bleak. A lot of the stores have closed down.
Cecil and Boleyn Williams, walk through the rotting cornfield and she reveals that she’s going off to college next week. He whines that with his grades, he’ll be stuck in this “creepy, dying place” forever.
Eden rides up on her horse; she’s infatuated with the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland. It looks like Eden and her many friends are making some kid “walk the plank” from a water tower. Calder Covington comes out of the field and yells that the kids have broken out the window in his car.
Bo and Calder go off together. He turned 18 last week, and he’s growing weed to make enough money to get out of town.
There’s a town meeting, Robert, Bo’s father, blames “Big Corn” and GMOs. Pastor Penney says it has more to do with their moral and spiritual failings. Another man wants to simply accept subsidies and never grow corn again. Bo says she disagrees with both of them, all they do is argue and sell their souls to different masters—they need to restore the soil. They take a vote, completely ignoring the many children in the room. One guy takes umbrage to children wanting to vote, and everyone laughs at the kids. The measure to plow over the corn and take subsidies instead passed.
Eden goes out into the cornfield to cry in embarrassment, and the corn reaches out to comfort her. As the tractors and threshers get ready to dig up the cornfields, Eden talks to the children. Bo calls her father a sellout, and he seems to agree.
Cecil walks down the street and overhears arguing in every house. Eden comes out of the dark and says, “I can help—with your pain.” She leads him out to the cornfield, where a bunch of kids sit in a circle singing. They go on a little further and he sees… it.
Bo talks to her teenage friends about contacting an Internet reporter to help with the town’s problems. Bo catches Eden and all the children painting the corn roots red with the blood of pigs. Bo tells Eden and all the kids to spread the word about a secret town meeting tonight at the town hall. She asks Cecil, “Are we making a mistake?”
Robert and his wife wake up in handcuffs. Bo and Cecil tell them they’re to be witnesses at a trial. The group drives to the town hall and find only Eden. She says, “You were late, so we just went ahead and did it. The trial.” Inside, Bo finds Calder’s father hanging from his neck.
The group walks through town, which is now very much on fire. They arrive at the police station, where most of the adults are locked in a cell. Bo and the teenagers aren’t involved with any of this, it’s all the little kids. Calder tries to do something, and he’s immediately beaten to death. Eden puts on a gas mask and fills the jail full of the same poison gas that killed all the kids at the orphanage.
Most of the adults, including Bo’s mother, wake up in a deep pit out by the cornfield. Eden gives the command, and boys in tractors fill in the hole.
Bo warns her two teenage friends to get out of town and be safe, but she’s going to stay and help free her father. Eden tells her, “Putting them on trial was your idea. What did you think would happen? Whose side are you on?” She intends to send the remaining prisoners out into the cornfield to feed “He Who Walks.”
Eden talks to Pastor Penney about sinning. He didn’t sin against the corn, but he did… something she wants revenge for. The kids pull his eyes out one at a time before releasing an inhuman roar. The rest of the adults are led into the cornfield. They go willingly because they don’t realize there’s really something in there. We notice that the corn has been getting greener and thicker.
Eden demonstrates that she’s captured the reporter that Bo had called. They carry the woman to the barn, where Bo finds her two friends hanging from the rafters, dead. They hang up the reporter and call for “He Who Walks.” Bo swears that “He” isn’t real.
Then He arrives, absolutely, positively real. It drags the reporter off into the dense, green corn. The knock Bo out and pour fuel all over her. Bo convinces Eden that the whole barn would explode, so she orders them to chop her up instead.
Bo runs for it out into the cornfield, trailing gasoline behind her. She finds her father and others, all dead. She gets a good look at He Who Walks, and he’s basically a big, green Groot.
He chases her through the cornfield. Groot roars like a dinosaur and walks right past her—nope, jump scare! It grabs her, and she stabs it with an old machete and runs off.
She runs to Calder’s abandoned car and looks for the keys. They’re inside, but didn’t Calder mention that the gas tank had a hole in it? It’s not going far. She barely makes it to the road before the car dies. Not only that, but Eden’s hiding in the back seat with a cattle gun. Bo uses the cigarette lighter from the ancient car to ignite spilled gasoline.
Between the leaking fuel form the car, and the trail she left behind her, the fire finds it all the way back to the barn, which explodes and sets the rest of the cornfield on fire. Everything burns.
Bo gloats, “Your fantasy is finished Eden.” Eden glowers as a burning Groot comes out behind her. She walks into the cornfield as the monster follows her. Then everything burns some more, and we see the monster burn up.
Bo goes out to the field the next day and finds a burned-up Eden out there. “Relax Bo, nothing ever really dies in the corn.” Then she sprouts tendrils and kills Bo.
Commentary
Kate Moyer, as Eden, is really very good as the psychotic little Eden. Elena Kampouris, as Bo, wasn’t as good, and wasn’t convincing as a teenager, but I suspect that was due to unrealistic writing, not necessarily her acting.
This one doesn’t offer the same religious evangelism that Isaac did in the original film; Eden’s just evil— because. The original was also making a statement on evangelicals, cults, and religious fanatics; this one is just a mind-controlling monster who lives in a cornfield.
The monster effects were decent, but the logic behind that much fuel not evaporating and still making a burnable line that far away is just ridiculous. It wasn’t awful taken on its own, but it pales in comparison to the original and really didn’t need to be made.