‘Children of the Corn’: Stephen King’s oxymoronically unadaptable novel
At first glance, it seems ridiculous to suggest that Children of the Corn belongs in the rare club of Stephen King novels that are unfilmable, if only because the story has been brought to the screen so many times.
One of the most unlikely franchise-starters in cinema history, the prolific author’s 1977 short story has become an entity unto itself. Calling it a goldmine wouldn’t be accurate when the majority of movies inspired by the tale have either been crap, box office busts, straight-to-video affairs, or a combination of all three.
Given his status as one of the most heavily-adapted writers in history, who’d be in with a very good shout of claiming the all-time top spot if it wasn’t for some guy called William Shakespeare, not every page-to-screen translation of King’s writings will be a winner. However, for whatever reason, the industry has become obsessed with trying to make Children of the Corn work.
It’s not an overly complicated or complex narrative in the grand scheme of things, with a struggling couple taking a cross-country road trip to try and salvage their crumbling marriage. Unfortunately, they hit a literal bump in the road when they ran down a young boy, who’d already had his throat cut and been tossed in front of their car.
They put the body in the back of the car and pitch up in the nearest town, only to discover the seemingly abandoned outpost of Gatlin is populated entirely by creepy kids who worship a mysterious demon that dwells in the cornfields. It’s A-to-B-to-C terror, but despite many attempts, there’s never been an even halfway decent Children of the Corn flick.
There’s plenty to choose from, too, with the 1984 original starring Linda Hamilton followed by eight sequels – with Charlize Theron making her feature debut in 1995’s threequel Urban Harvest – in addition to remakes that were released in 2009 and 2020, respectively.
On the page, King uses the unseen and unspoken to create a lurching sense of dread that permeates the rest of the story, focusing on ratcheting up the psychological tension instead of dedicating his time to crafting verbose passages of gruesome, gory terrors. It’s a spine-tingling read, but on the screen, Children of the Corn, in its many forms, has never been anything more than formulaic slasher fare in a world where horror stories with dead-eyed and unsettling kids are ten-a-penny.
The ending was also altered from the bleak conclusion of King’s source material into something more palatable for mainstream audiences, and while that did at least allow the opening instalment to recoup its budget more than 14 times over in ticket sales, it was a little too neat, rounding things out on a predictable note that saw the heroes valiantly save the day and escape relatively unscathed.
It may not necessarily be the case that Children of the Corn is unadaptable when it’s somehow conspired to spawn 11 features. Still, seeing as not a single one of them has been anything to write home about, the evidence is stacked sky high that nobody in Hollywood has found a way to do King’s story justice, no matter how many attempts are made.
