Movie Appraisal: Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering (1996)

No.

I don't want to review this movie. It's terrible. I feel bad and angry even looking at the poster. After the highlight of the third movie in the series, Children of the Corn IV feels awful in almost every way. It's the exact opposite of the last movie to its own detriment. While this movie has some decent actors in it- hell even a few KNOWN actors with Naomi Watts and Karen Black- the acting of the movie cannot save this pile of garbage.

It's the writing and plot that let's this movie down. The focus is all wrong throughout the movie. The children should be the focus, not the adults, not Naomi Watts and Donald the father of a random boy. Give me more about the children. Are they now possessed by dead children for reasons instead of by the corn (CotC III) or a charismatic leader possessed by He Who Walks Behind the Rows (CotC and CotC II)? Why is this a thing now? Why did it all have to be ghosts? Ghosts aren't scary in this context, and they're also very certainly not interesting either. And retconning the events of the previous movies to simply have He Who Walks Behind the Rows be a vengeful boy preacher spirit is disrespectful to that previous material at best. I can't even deal with the fact I actually watch this thing.

The movie is about Naomi Watts coming home from school to see to her sick mother who might be going senile. Her sister (who is revealed to be her abandoned(!?) daughter later) is there being annoyed and worried all at once. Eventually the little girl gets kind of possessed by the boy preacher ghost because she was lied to and abandoned, never mind the girl is all of four, seems to have a decent life, and maybe not being raised by a young woman trying to make something of herself is a little warranted? I don't know. Mistakes are made, and in this case, a solution was found that seemed right. Calling it a lie when the girl is barely old enough to understand what a lie is seems ridiculous.

I don't even know what else to say here. Children are possessed. They kill some adults. The plot probably happens. A ton of characters complain. The children have dead ghost blood and were diseased for some reason that remains unexplained to me and the rest of humanity. Mercury is somehow bad because the ghost preacher boy was poisoned by mercury. Well, that's all good and find. His silver bullet is a mercury bullet? Ugh...

Worst of all are the sprinklers being laced with mercury. There's so many things wrong with that. one, Mercury is a metal, heavier than water. Two, Naomi Watts probably has heavy metal poisoning now. So much for your goddamn happy ending. This is what happens when you're very stupid.

I want to purge this movie from my head. Please let this movie leave. I don't want to think about it anymore.

It's not scary. It wrecks large amounts of the franchise which is already treading the mediocre line. It's a terrible and nonsensical plot. And it actually made me angry. So, I refuse to recommend this THING. Go wash your eyes out with bleach before trying to get through this trash.