Just Call Me Angel of the Mourning

Pity a film that oversells itself with a way-too-good (by my standards) trailer. While anyone can understand a preview that shows the best bits to draw you in, it’s something of a tragedy to realize mid-movie that nothing you’re about to see will beat those 3 minutes of teasery.

Examine, if you will, the red band trailer for 2010’s Legion:

Awesome, right? Spidery senior citizens! Cheesy one-liners involving Christianity! Fist pump Doug Jones! Kickass Roc! Dennis Quaid aging gracefully!

How could this not be the best theatrical horror since Orphan ?

Sigh. As almost everyone who eventually watched Legion knows, it’s kind of the very definition of the word ‘meh.’

Quick Plot: 8 months pregnant with a soon-to-be adopted fetus probably suffocating from desert air and chain smoke, Charlie (Adrianne Palicki) waits tables at a lonely restaurant visited primarily by lost and car troubled travelers. On this sunny xmas eve, diners include a possible thug (you know...because he's black), unhappy rich family with a skanky teen daughter, and regulars/employees Dennis Quaid (why?) Charles “Roc” S. Dutton, and lovestruck Lucas Black. Things get slightly more interesting when newcomer Michael (Paul Bettany, all whispery and white) saunters in like an albino cowboy, his mission being to ensure the safety of Charlie’s unborn child in order to save the soon-to-be exterminated human race.

(Significance???)

See, God’s going retro this year with a throwback to the Old Testament. Instead of a flood (soooo B.C.) or locust plague, the big man has ordered his flying posse to zombify mere mortals. Ever the defiant one, Michael cuts off his own strings--er, wings--because Black’s unwavering crush on the town slut means deep down, humans are awesome. 

Had I not watched the impeccably cut trailer, Legion may have proved to be a guilty enough pleasure. B+ list actors slumming in wacko genre fare is always a treat, and the very concept of a demon/angel/zombie war is entertaining enough in its silliness. Unfortunately, there’s something so heavy about Legion that never lets the audience feel any joy.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t require tongue-in-cheek goofiness in every religiously themed horror, but a film should know when to wink. Legion seems to think such a twitch would be a sin worthy of eternal torment or no hard candy from the likes of this woman:

High Points

One bait and switch scene involving blond children (never a good sign) is actually rather frightening

God’s fickleness is somewhat amusing in a total “What a dick!” kind of way

Low Points

How do you cast Kevin Durand--that 6’8 or so slab of psycho Lost baddie goodness--as a dark angel and make him so damn dull?

Remember that awesome Doug Jones ice cream man transformation you saw in the trailer? Cool right? And that’s it

The Winning Line

“I gotta get my bible.”

“What for?”

 “Somebody’s gotta start praying”

If Legion had more moments of cheese such as these, I would be melting it over french fries and smiling far more than my current sleepy scowl

Lessons Learned

Just cause you’re a girl means you CAN deliver a baby

The assigning of the next messiah is more random than the state lottery drawing

Angelically possessed zombies are surprisingly easy to kill, providing you’re not an idiot that runs straight into 180 of them gathered in mob stance 

Rent/Bury/Buy

Invest no capital or energy in seeing this film. Too empty for a rewatch, too blah to be drinkable. It’s a stopping-on-a-cable-channel-on-a-snowy-evening kind of movie that should prove to be passable enough for a TV watch but simply doesn’t require any more of your resources. Pop a mini-bag of popcorn, cue up the superb trailer, and save yourself 106 minutes with a much better time.

Kid Nation

Stephen King’s Children of the Corn is a superb little piece of fiction offering a terrifying portrait of middle America, fundamentalist religion, and the horror of combining kids with power and ideas they don’t really understand. For the last 25 years, filmmakers have been trying--with varying levels of success and several stop-bys of soon-to-be huge Hollywood actresses--to capture what worked in under 25 pages. While some have had their moments, none have actually brought all the potential terror of sunny cornfields and cultish little kids to the screen.

And that tradition continues with the SyFy Channel original, Children of the Corn. While this remake (well, really just second adaptation of the source material) comes the closest to following King’s original work (it’s based in part on his original screenplay penned back in the days of big hair and leg warmers), it stumbles in a several patches of plot, character, and effects choices. 

Quick Plot: It's 1963 and the children of Gatlin are unionizing, Old Testament style. Led by a kid preacher dressed like Willy Wonka’s Mike TV, they seem to agree that the sins of adults are polluting the corn. A pig is sacrificed, the film flashes forward 12 years, and viewers bemoan the loss of the diner massacre so effective in the 1984 version.

Hateful couple Vicky and Burt are driving cross country towards their divorce and, we hope, brutal death. I have nothing against bickering characters or unhappily married folks realistically arguing, but when a man slaps a woman and you want to buy him a beer, you know there's a problem. Anyway, Burt's a proud Vietnam veteran and Vicky is a former prom queen (the fact that they're an interracial couple in 1975 is never really discussed) who hates everything in life. During one of their many arguments, Burt hits a young boy with his car.

Yes, the blood comes from Burt's Chevy, but the gash on the victim's neck was clearly pre-administered. Thirty years away from a cell phone, Vicky and Burt load up the body and head to the nearest town--Gatlin, a seemingly abandoned but very devout little hamlet rich in religious imagery (including a psychedelic mural depicting He Who Walks Behind the Rows as a stern Jerry Garcia), the pitter patter of smaller feet, and creepiness. If you've seen any of the previous CotC films, you know that those large hat wearing kiddies are not living in an Amish Paradise.

Unlike most remakes, the concept of re-doing this story was rife with potential. The original film, while highly flawed, did a spectacular job of creating an eerily devout clan of children living in the heartland of America. It failed not in its horror, but in the forced Hollywoodness of the rest: cute kid heroes, romantically happy leads, and an ending growing moldy with test audience germs. If a strong director took hold of King's original story and incorporated what worked from the first attempt, this could have been quite an effective little film.

It didn't and it's not, but that's not to say Children of the Corn '09 is a total failure. For starters, age appropriate actors make for strikingly disturbing extras, although their thespian skills are sadly nonexistent. Having the central couple be in disarray is interesting in itself, but it feels like both actors are still in the improv session of rehearsal, arguing and baiting each other just to feel one another out rather than having a realistic disagreement. The religious angle is probably the best thing going for Children of the Corn. Part of the reason I think some of the sequels succeeded was that they had the freedom to find different aspects of what's so terrifying about this premise. Blind faith is frightening, plain and simple. When such strong feelings are placed in the bodies of prepubescent youths who don't necessarily understand what life is yet, the result can be horrifying.

Why couldn’t this just be Gatlin’s story? Yes, we needed Burt and Vicky as a way into a closed society, but as soon as they enter, we want nothing more than to witness their end. Compare this with a similar themed, much better executed film, Who Can Kill a Child? The leads are also less interesting than the evil children running amok, but we still care enough about them to fear for their lives. In Children of the Corn, every minute of Vicky & Burt's screen time is painful in a punch-your-wife kind of way. The children, though lacking acting talent, are intriguing in their youth and eeriness. We get glimpses of how their religion works and are actually moved by some sudden new directions in the final scene, but the disjointed narrative doesn’t really let the audience care one way or another.

High Points

Casting such young actors adds a disturbing spin to the group children scenes

While the score leaves a lot to be desired (namely subtlety), there is a nice early reference to the haunting choral soprano theme so powerful in the original

The first mass attack on Vicky is done quite well, which is quite a feat considering how much we want to see the character die

Little touches, like quick shots showing corpses used in place of department store mannequins, add a nice touch of evil to Gatlin

Low Points

\The younger actors clearly have no idea what their dialogue means, which is fine for their psyches but not so much for cinematic effect

I haven’t wanted to kill a protagonist this much since Jar Jar Binks

Just as I was thinking that the Vietnam vet angle had its merits, the film had to get all literal and give us a reenactment flashback in the middle of corn

When will filmmakers learn: synthesized demon voices do not sound sound scary, just stupid

Lessons Learned

Indian corn crafts are blasphemous to Californians

Raise your children to love religion and hate the world

Unhappy couples make for incredibly unhappy viewing

When walking by a homicidal mob, it’s best not to audibly call them little bastards if you don’t want to then be chased by sickle and rake wielding brats

Previous Theory Confirmed

If Revenge of the Sith has taught us anything, it's that no actor--even the disembodied voice of James Earl Jones--is capable of pulling of the "Nooooo!" scene in this day and age

Winning Line

"Put that in your God and smoke it." 

Can someone explain to me how one does this?

Rent/Bury/Buy

Just because a film is close to its source material does not mean that it's any good. That being said, this remake/adaptation (because really, it's not remaking the 1984 film, just re-adapting King's story) is not terrible and probably falls somewhere in the middle of the many entries in this series. There are some strong moments and the actual religious kid angle is done quite well. Its biggest fault is a pair of horrifically unsympathetic protagonists and a lack of focus for our characters. Fans of the series or rural/killer child horror should give it a rent (or TiVo it on SyFy...ugh I hate writing those four letters), but there's nothing revolutionary here. I'll keep watching more sequels and hope a better one comes along.

But hey, I'm just one opinionated corn consumer in this vast universe. So how about checking out some other takes on this version via the one and only Final Girl Film Club? Head on over for what's always a good time, thanks to bloggess extraordinaire Stacie Ponder and all the other industrious club kids with a free 90 minutes to spare on THE WORST MARRIAGE IN CINEMA HISTORY. 

Sorry. I'm still twitching from the amount of bickering these characters wrought. Point is, FILM CLUB!