The 2020 iteration of Children of the Corn is the third distinct film adaptation of the original 1977 short story by Stephen King, having no continuity ties to either the franchised movies begun with the 1984 film or the 2009 adaptation by Syfy.
Unlike other iterations of the film, this story takes place in the fictional Nebraskan town of Rylstone as a demented twelve-year-old girl named Eden Edwards inspires the town's children into a bloody uprising against the adults, claiming divine inspiration from a spirit called "He Who Walks" that dwells in the town's dying corn fields. Only teenager Boleyn Williams retains her sanity, and must fight to escape the carnage. Thus, rather than the protagonists being unwitting travelers who stumble into the damned town after the cult has ruled for years already, the focus is instead on the initial formation of the cult.
This film contains examples of:
- Abusive Parents:
- It's implied that the teen boy who massacres the adults at the Rylstone orphanage was pushed to do so due in response to abusive treatment they inflicted upon him, Eden and the other orphans.
- Mr. Colvington routinely beats his two sons.
- Adaptational Alternate Ending: Boleyn sets the cornfields on fire, including He Who Walks, which both destroys the corn and sets up a signal flare to neighboring towns. Seeing Eden's promises going up in smoke and her god dying, the children throw down their weapons, implicitly losing faith. Seeing this, Eden decides to walk off into the burning corn fields with the dying He Who Walks. But then, the next morning, Boleyn goes out to check on the burnt fields, and is surprised by the hideously mangled yet still alive Eden, who tells Boleyn that "nothing ever dies in the corn" (something said to her before the orphanage massacre at the film's start) and then explodes into a plant-monster akin to He Who Walks before enveloping the screaming Boleyn.
- Adults Are Useless: The adult population of Rylstone range from incompetent and pathetic to outright cruel and evil. From the implicitly abusive caretakers at the Rylstone orphanage to the sheriff who pumps animal tranquilizer into said orphanage and kills all the kids inside, from the pathetic and yet vaguely sinister Preacher Penny to Mr. Williams, an emotional wreck who has given up on everything.
- Anti-Villain: Eden serves an evil being and kills a lot of people who haven't directly wronged her, but her primary motivation is that every adult who was supposed to take of her has comprehensively failed and nobody cares—apart from some nasty articles and the possibility of not getting re-elected, the Sheriff seems to be facing absolutely zero consequences for poisoning fifteen children to death with his harebrained animal tranquilizer plan—and she's finally snapped. It's notable that when Eden makes her pact with He Who Walks, you can see a hand made of cornstalks reaching out to pat a crying Eden on the shoulder, and Eden later says He Who Walks looked after her and that's why she wants to feed Him. She's creepy and disturbingly quick to be okay with murder, but she's also a traumatized child clinging to the only...being...who seems to give a damn about her.
- Bloodier and Gorier: Zigzagged. Like in the 1984 film, most of the killing and carnage takes place off-screen. But there are some surprisingly graphic scenes, including a brutally methodical eye-gouging, somebody getting their face smashed in with a baseball bat, people being Buried Alive and a woman being ripped in half.
- Body Horror: Eden after having survived the cornfield fires is so mangled she should barely be alive, with flesh burned down to the bone on many parts of her body and a gouged-out eye. And that's before she is torn apart from the inside by greenery, implied to be a seed of He Who Walks that she allowed to germinate inside her body.
- Buried Alive: Many of the adults who were taken alive during "the trial" are then taken to a deep trench on the edge of the cornfields and allowed to wake up before the children use tractors to bury them alive.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Bo asks a reporter to come to town to write an article shaming the adults for selling out, but then she stands Bo up. Turns out she did show up like she promised, Eden just kidnapped her and held her captive until later.
- Corny Nebraska: Rylstone is explicitly a corn-growing farming community in Nebraska. However, the town is facing economic extinction after years of bad harvests, ever since they agreed to use experimental fertilizers and GMO corn provided by a company called BioSynth. Early in the film, the town even decides they've got no choice but to agree to a crop subsidiary, destroying their harvests in exchange for a sizable government payout.
- Creepy Child: Eden Edwards is sinister and clearly disturbed even before she becomes a murderous cult leader.
- Darker and Edgier: This film adaptation is significantly darker than its 1984 counterpart. It's notably Bloodier and Gorier in parts, has dark inferences of child abuse, and has an unambiguous Downer Ending.
- Downer Ending: Boleyn seemingly kills Eden and He Who Walks, only for He Who Walks to survive by taking shelter inside Eden's body, bursting out to envelop and implicitly kill Boleyn.
- Eye Scream:
- Eden uses a reaping blade to methodically carve Preacher Penny's eyes free of their sockets, then uses her hand to rip them out by their dangling nerves. Then she drives a pitchfork into the screaming man's now-empty sockets, finally killing him.
- Boleyn's father's corpse, when He Who Walks starts to consume it, has its eyes popped out of its skull from the inside by the vegetation.
- When Boleyn encounters the walking corpse of Eden, one of her eyes has seemingly melted out of its socket.
- Face Death with Dignity: After the cornfields and He Who Walks are set on fire, Eden calmly walks out into the blazing vegetation with her god at her side, content to perish in the flames.
- Face–Heel Turn: Boleyn's younger brother decides to throw his lot in with the murderous children rather than side with his sister to try and save what few adults are left after the initial uprising.
- Facial Horror: Calder Colvington is killed with a blow from a baseball bat that smashes his face apart, the camera focusing on his mangled, broken jaw and shredded cheek.
- Final Girl: Boleyn Williams, our viewpoint protagonist, ends up being the only person who didn't join the cult to survive till the end of the movie. And even she gets killed off in The Stinger.
- Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke: Rylstone's years of bad crop harvests are blamed on the use of GMO corn. Which is also one possible interpretation as to where He Who Walks came from.
- Half the Man He Used to Be: He Who Walks kills the reporter offered to him as a Human Sacrifice by taking one leg in either hand and then pulling them apart until she tears in half down the middle. Then he throws the sundered corpse in two different directions.
- Human Sacrifice: After they've massacred most of the adults of Rylstone, Eden decides to offer up the remainder to He Who Walks.
- Kill It with Fire: Boleyn ultimately defeats He Who Walks by setting the cornfields on fire.
- Lost in the Maize:
- The orphan boy from the movie's start is implied by dialogue to often be left out in the cornfields over night as punishment.
- After the orphanage massacre, it's mentioned that Eden was lost in the cornfield for a week or more before she was found.
- Towards the film's second half, a number of adults are "sent into the corn" as a Human Sacrifice to He Who Walks.
- Maybe Mundane Maybe Magic: In the film's second act, it's left ambiguous if the children really are being guided by some hellish new deity in He Who Walks, or if Eden is simply deranged. In the third act, when He Who Walks turns out to be Real After All, it's left ambiguous if he's a truly supernatural creature or maybe some kind of unforeseen mutant spawned from all the GMOs and pesticides used in the cornfield.
- Real After All: When Eden makes her big flashy Human Sacrifice, stringing up a reporter and calling out to He Who Walks to come to them... nothing happens, and Boleyn tries to break Eden's hold over the children by loudly asserting that He Who Walks isn't real. It seems to be working... then He Who Walks comes marching out of the cornfield...
- Sinister Minister: Zigzagged with Pastor Penny, who comes off more as pathetic, ineffectual and cringing than outright malicious or sinister. That said, Eden's commentary before she gouges out his eyes and kills him do carry some overtones of him being a Pedophile Priest.
