Shudder Saturday: Children Of The Corn (2020)

For many of my age, Children Of The Corn feels like another of those fun little movies that everyone saw as soon as it hit VHS. I'm not sure how well it did in cinemas, if it did well at all, but it was a film that felt like a popular choice for us horror kids . . . perhaps because it allowed us to watch some actual "horror kids" onscreen. Everything should have ended with that one film though, allowing us to view it as a cherished cult classic that was too weird to turn into a franchise. But no, now we have a franchise. And I've seen all but one of the damn things. Missing that one wasn't a deliberate decision. I just lost track of how many bloody instalments there are in the series.

This is the second remake, using the word quite loosely. It has corn. It has some killer kids. It also has writing and direction from Kurt Wimmer. And it's not good.

Kate Moyer plays Eden Edwards, the main child at the heart of all the nastiness this time around. It's all to do with the power of the corn, of course, and action is spurred on by the adults in a small community making the decision to get rid of their crop and use the fields in a different way. The main adults to feel the wrath of the children are Robert Williams (Callan Mulvey) and Pastor Penney (Bruce Spence). Robert might have a route to safety though, being supported and assisted by his daughter, Boleyn (Elena Kampouris).

The longer it has been since I last saw the 1984 Children Of The Corn, the more fondly I remember it. I know that I'm being unfair when I compare any remakes or sequels to something I am viewing with some nostalgia filters firmly in place. But that feels like less of a problem when other attempts to adapt the material seem to step further and further away from the simple joy of it. All you need is a small town, a lot of corn, and evil kids killing off the adults. While this film has those elements in place, the ratio feels all wrong, leading to the end result feeling completely fumbled.

Wimmer isn't exactly a sign of quality, considering the wildly varying quality of his filmography, and he seems to spend his time here making every wrong decision possible, from poor pacing and a lack of real scares/tension to a disappointing scarcity of memorable characters. And don't even get me started on how ridiculous the ending is, even in comparison to the silliness of the original movie.

At least Moyer is great fun, doing her best to make the whole thing watchable as she toys with the adults around her. She's the only real highlight though. Kampouris isn't a good lead, and not helped by her character being so poorly written, and Mulvey and Spence play people you actually just want to see meet a nasty end. Not because they're necessarily evil, although it's certainly suggested that one is more deserving of death than the other, but because they're main characters who feel designated for some kind of special fate.

Bad writing, bad effects (although they remain better than most of the eye-hurting CGI from the many other films in this series), and bad performances make this a sadly wasted opportunity, considering it looks to have secured a relatively decent budget for being such a late entry into a cornfield that should have been razed many years ago.

3/10

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Netflix And Chill: Till Death (2021)

Say what you like about Megan Fox, and oh so many already have, she has often mixed interesting projects into her filmography alongside the movie roles that have her as little more than “eye candy”. It may have taken far too long for people to fully appreciate Jennifer’s Body, but there’s a chance that something like Till Death can find an audience now, especially if people are interested in a fairly straightforward thriller that is happy to throw subtlety to the wind as it depicts a woman fighting to survive an unhappy marital situation.

Fox plays Emma, who is unhappily married to Mark (Eoin Macken). Mark used to be a lawyer who helped put bad guys away, like the man (Bobby Ray, played by Callan Mulvey) who attacked Emma many years ago, but now he makes a better living by keeping bad guys out of prison. Mark may also be aware that Emma is so unhappy in their marriage that she has recently started an affair with Tom (Aml Ameen). Perhaps that is the reason for him taking them out to an isolated lake house, enjoying one lovely night together, and then blowing his brains out in the morning. With Emma handcuffed to him. It soon becomes clear that Mark has made sure Emma cannot leave, and has made sure that she cannot remove the cuffs easily. He has also invited some dangerous people to come to the lake house, promising them a very hefty reward.

The feature debut of director S. K. Dale, Till Death is a lean, enjoyable, thriller that really starts to become more entertaining once the central dilemma is fully established. Very early scenes are a bit strange and awkward, with both leads showing just how uncomfortable they are around one another in their problem-riddled marriage, but the suicide moment feels like the moment when the film is moved into another gear. Writer Jason Carvey, although without a wealth of experience in his filmography, generally keeps things tense enough to distract viewers from picking at the more obvious plot holes.

Fox is great in her role, carrying a number of scenes on her own (with a corpse attached to her). As the death and trauma actually bring her character to life, she becomes more and more committed to surviving, something that would have seemed impossible to the woman in the opening scenes. It's this performance, in line with the main theme of the movie, that makes the film work so well. Mulvey is a dangerous and menacing presence, as he so often is, and Jack Roth is good as your standard "bad man who will do bad things, but doesn't want to go as far as killing someone". Macken is easy to dislike, while Ameen is easy to like, and that is your main cast sorted.

Although the premise may be looking at someone fighting to break away from a bad marriage/husband, literally, there's also an interesting aspect to Till Death that shows male entitlement, and how so many men think they are doing well by women as long as they're not acting on par with the worst men around. There's really only one potential good guy here, and even he makes the mistake of not listening to a woman who knows more about the impending danger than he does. Which clarifies that, while others may help on occasion, the only one who can really help Emma have a proper life . . . is Emma.

Get through those difficult early scenes and you end up with a solid thriller that is an easy one to recommend.

7/10

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Prime Time: Shadow In The Cloud (2020)

Chloë Grace Moretz stars as a young WWII pilot, named Maude, who "hitches a lift" on a B-17 with a male crew who don't appreciate her presence. She has a bag full of top secret documents, meaning the men have no choice, but it's not long until she is placed in a turret, away from everyone else. As Maude tries to work against the misogyny and mistrust of the men, things are soon complicated. There are some enemy planes nearby that shouldn't be. And there's also the appearance of a gremlin.

I was excited about Shadow In The Cloud ever since I first heard about it. It's a brilliant idea, a simple one that has the potential for so much fun. Unfortunately, not much of that fun is apparent in a film that gets far too silly far too quickly, and also feels horribly cheap for almost every minute of the runtime. 

With a script, by Max Landis, apparently heavily re-written by director Roseanne Liang (after the well-documented allegations against Landis), it's astounding to think how bad this was at the first draft stage, The characters are paper-thin, in a way that damages the film by making it impossible to really care for anyone, the few action beats are implausible and unexciting, and the plot developments are absolutely ridiculous. It's insulting to viewers how badly put together this is. Easy enough to forgive if it was a TV show episode (which is worth noting, as it feels at times very close to an enjoyable episode of "Amazing Stories" that had the same setting), but a horrible endurance test in feature form. It's as if the script is some out-of-date milk that has been spilt on a sunny day and you're forced to sit in the same room with it as a hot sun shines through the windows and makes everything worse and worse.

I can't really fault Moretz though, who does the best job of anyone here. She's not doing anywhere near her best work, but she isn't bad at being a strong lead to root for. That's more down to her being Moretz than the script, however, and nobody else has that advantage. Byron Coll, Callan Mulvey, Taylor John Smith, Beulah Koale, and Nick Robinson make up most of the main airmen, but I couldn't have namechecked any of them just now without the use of IMDb. They don't get any moments to separate themselves from one another, simply being put out by the presence of a woman on their plane, and when the third act allows Moretz to interact with them at closer range it's just too little too late.

I've already seen comments from others who enjoyed this, people who appreciated that it was simply a fun viewing experience for them, so I cannot say that my view is in any way the majority one. You may like it, you may hate it. You're unlikely to love it though. As soon as the end credits ended, I couldn't help but think of everything that was wrong with it. And the more I thought about it, the more I found wrong. Even a small cartoon that kicked things off by explaining what gremlins are. I enjoyed that while it was on. Then I started wondering why they felt the need to include it, considering viewers would either a) know what a gremlin is, or b) simply be informed by the script that a creature was on the plane and trying to damage it. Maybe it was to pad out the runtime, which is at least only 83 minutes. I guess that could have been my review in a more succinct style - terrible, but not overlong.

3/10

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Beyond Skyline (2017)

Remember when Skyline came out? Remember how many people agreed that it looked great, especially considering the budget, but was really didn't have anything more going for it? Which perhaps explains why Beyond Skyline now comes along as one of the most unexpected, and unwanted (for many), sci-fi sequels in recent years.

It was even more surprising when people heard that it would star Frank Grillo, Iko Uwais, and Yayan Ruhian (the latter two most famous just now for their roles in The Raid movies). But could it pull off the ultimate surprise move and turn out to be a good film?

The plot concerns the same alien invasion that we saw during the first film. We're just seeing things from a different perspective this time. Grillo is Mark, a tough detective who starts the film picking up his son (Trent, played by Jonny Weston) from jail. When all hell breaks loose, Mark tries to protect Trent from the alien invaders. And so begins a tale that will throw some hardy humans together with some advanced tech that may just help them defeat the aliens, or may just delay the inevitable as Earth is overpowered and drained.

Written and directed by Liam O'Donnell (co-writer of the first movie), Beyond Skyline is a film that certainly seeks to make up for the failings of the first instalment. If the first film had nothing much beyond the great FX work, this one wants to throw in a whole boat-load of new ideas. Taking the key moment from the end of the first film as a starting point, it naturally progresses things in a way that could have worked well if O'Donnell wasn't determined to expand everything at the same time: the scale, the cast of characters, the implausibility, the wavering focus of the film.

The fact that Frank Grillo must be used to being wasted in the few main roles he gets doesn't make it any easier to see him wasted once again. He's a good choice for the role, and easily the best thing in the film, but his character is almost rendered invisible by everything that's going on around him, both in terms of onscreen activity and the frantic plotting. Bojana Novakovic is similarly wasted, given the deep and resonant character of . . . female. Weston isn't onscreen for that long, which is something you could also say of Uwais and Ruhian. Both of those impressive fighters get one or two decent moments, but it's really too little too late when you think of the movie that could have been built around their skillset. At least Antonio Fargas does as well as he can with his small role.

A lot of people have enjoyed this movie more than I did, and it's definitely a better attempt to work a plot into the special effects this time around. But just because it's better than the first film doesn't make it a good film. The flaws drag this down to average, at best. It's a mess, there's nobody to really care for (despite having more characters to choose from), and any sequel to a film starring Brittany Daniel loses a point for not bringing back Brittany Daniel. That's my rule anyway.

5/10

Buy the bluray here.
Or, in America, buy it here.