#children of the corn

Day 29

Reflections on: Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin(2021)

• Full disclosure: this review is totally biased because I am a fan of one of the actors, Dan Lippert. He’s a talented improv comedian and is one quarter of the hilarious group Big Grande. I’m also a fan of his excellent podcasts The Teacher’s LoungeandMan Dog Pod. I’m not sure I would have liked the movie as much as I did without consuming all of that previous content.
• It feels like Dan Lippert improvised most of his lines. There are familiar themes from his comedy such as: bad MJ impressions and cannibalism. 
• This is the 7th film in the Paranormal Activity franchise. I haven’t seen any of the previous instalments. This is technically a “found footage” movie like the others, yet instead of using security cameras footage, this looks professional due to the fact that the main character has hired a crew to help her make a documentary. 
• It was strange to watch a movie that took place in a COVID-19 world. It’s only briefly addressed in the beginning when Dan Lippert’s character awkwardly forgets to put on his mask at an airport and then offhandedly remarks, “I got COVID like 5 times.”
• Dan Lippert steals every scene he’s in - which is most of them. He casually does yoga in the background, refers to his camouflage pyjamas as his “cammies”, offers a translation of “so weit nicht weiter” as “Sweet, nice wiener”, and gets an Amish makeover complete with a bob and bangs. A 6′7″ man with a cute bob is a sight to behold! 
• Despite being the main source of comedy in the story he’s also the most sensible character who figures out what’s going on before the compulsively confident and pathologically nosy protagonist. 
• The story has a lot of parallels with Midsommar(2019), but also has some similarities to Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and Children of the Corn(1984). 
• I won’t spoil the ridiculous ending but it does finish with a beautiful symphony of harmonious moos. 
• This was way more enjoyable than I expected! I loved it and would watch it again. Maybe you might not feel the same way if you’re not an Old Slob like me :)

Day 20

Reflections on: Halloween Kills(2021)

• This takes place immediately after Halloween(2018). You should watch that before watching this or you’ll definitely be pretty confused!
• John Carpenter’s music was perfect, as always. I got goosebumps after only the first couple of piano and synth notes :)
  
• I appreciated the flashbacks to Halloween night 1978 which showed new scenes that were concurrent with the events of Halloween (1978). This was a rare well-done retcon that successfully deepened the modern character’s motivations and provided richer context for the present story. 
• Like the previous film this was written by Danny McBride and David Gordon Green, yet it was missing their signature humour. I wished there was a little more levity in this. It’s pretty brutal, even for a slasher!
• Anthony Michael Hall plays Tommy - the little boy Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) babysat in the original film. He is UNRECOGNIZABLE as the Tony Hall you know and love. A shot of his face lit up by red light cuts immediately to a shot of a jack-o-lantern (see both above). After this comparison I couldn’t imagine him as anything other than a pumpkin. 
• I will never look at a fluorescent light bulb the same way again.
• Kyle Richards (who you may know as one of The Real Housewives of Beverley Hills or possibly from Watcher in the Woods (1980)) reprises her role from the 1978 Halloween as Lindsey, one of a few survivors of Michael Myers. I liked the addition of side characters who were personally affected by the events of the first film. Of course their lives were irrevocably altered 40 years ago, and as a result some of them feel like they must now be the heroes of the story. If I survived Mikey M. as a kid I think I would have moved far far away from Haddonfield, Illinois - probably to an uncharted island surrounded by sharks and mines.
• One of my horror movie pet peeves is the ridiculously inaccurate depiction of hospitals. Morgues are not designed in a way that a murder victim’s mother can accidentally discover the body of her disfigured child through a window in a busy hallway! COME ON! Hospital chaos was the most stressful part of this film for me. A mob of angry townspeople including doctors and nurses trample people and knock each other down stairwells. Medical students take the Hippocratic Oath to, “first, do no harm”. COME ON!
• An over-the-top (even for Halloween) rich couple (see above) now lives in Michael Myers’ childhood home. They are Big John, a honey-pondering, stoned jazz daddy, and Little John, a pirate daddy played by MADtv’s Michael McDonald. I’m sorry I know he’s been in many other things since then, but I will always associate him with that problematic show and Zima (a drink I’ve actually encountered only once - weirdly in Kochi, Japan). How do I know they’re rich? Sure, the house was probably cheap to buy as it was the site of multiple murders, but they’ve obviously put a lot of money into renovations. They also leave FOUR lamps on in their upstairs bedroom while they watch a movie downstairs. I did love that they were watching Minnie and Moskowitz (1971) by John Cassavetes - a perfect choice for Halloween night. 
• Laurie, albeit “geeked out on pain meds” tells Tommy to go find and kill Michael Myers. I know she’s not his babysitter anymore and Tommy is a fully grown adult, but this is still terrible, irresponsible advice. Laurie!!
• I know I said I liked the addition of all the side characters but there might actually be too many characters in this!
• The soundtrack includes an Anne Murray song?! Scary! The fact that I was able to identify an Anne Murray song - horrifying!!!
• One adult survivor character gives an order to two teens (in an attempt to protect them!) that follows the same logic from Children of the Corn(1983): “[If] you see anything suspicious - you honk the horn.” Have these people learned nothing?! Honking?!
• As just noted in Anamorph(2007), we are again presented with several gruesome tableaus. Why are serial killers such creative installation artists?! Are they taking some sort of online course?? Good for them!

Day 8

Reflections on: Children of the Corn(1983)

• I’ve been hearing references to this title my entire life, yet never really knew what it meant. It was exciting to finally watch it - I love corn! 
• As a child I think I conflated this film with Pumpkinhead(1988)andVillage of the Damned(1995). This is probably the worst of the 3 but it was still pretty entertaining.
• The protagonists drive a car with a book on the dashboard. The book is Night Shift - a collection of short stories by Stephen King. One of the stories in it is “Children of the Corn”. When a filmmaker adds these cute little winks and sly nods to their films they create a surreal logic vortex. These characters are fans of Stephen King’s writing? Have they got to the corn story in the book yet? Wouldn’t they react differently if that was the case? Linda Hamilton’s character would say something like “This is eerily similar to this story I’m reading right now”. I hate it. 
• Linda Hamilton made this the year before she starred in The Terminator (1984). Her character in this couldn’t be any different than Sarah Connor. She is repeatedly denied any agency despite being smart and capable. It almost feels like she couldn’t wait for the movie to be over so her career could start. I know I am projecting but she deserved better.
• Please forgive this long rant: the male protagonist (played by Peter Horton) is supposed to be a smart doctor but he consistently makes very bad decisions and has terrible instincts. He looks like a poor-man’s Steven Weber and dresses like a Jerry-Seinfeld-jeans-and-sneakers-wearing GOOF. He’s bossy, preachy, unlikable, and pathologically arrogant. He gets lost on the highway and instead of listening to a female character he decides the best solution is to DRIVE THROUGH A CORN FIELD. He sucks. It is unclear why Linda Hamilton’s character is with him at all. 
• My favourite part of the movie (besides all the corn of course) is when the main guy successfully evades a knife attack only to immediately ram his face into a pole. 
  
• A lot of corn was harmed during the making of this film. Linda Hamilton’s character asks “What is it with this corn?” as she walks through an abandoned diner full of corn on a street littered with corn. This is a good question. 
  
• Courntey Gains (AKA Hans Klopek from The Burbs (1989) - one of my favourites) is great as Malachai - a violent teen with beautiful feathered red hair. He plays this character as if he’s doing a bad impression of a D&D goon. His buddy Isaac is played perfectly creepy by John Franklin (AKA Cousin It from The Addams Family (1991) - another of my favourites!).
  
• Good basic fashion, except for Linda Hamilton’s long pleated dark beige shorts. Tons of denim. Nice quilt. Even the dog wears a yellow bandanna (which means he’s into watersports). 
• Lots of menacing shots of corn.
  
• Excellent arts (painting and collage) and corn-based crafts (see above).
• Very weird effects. Both practical and… animated??
• Spoiler alert: this is about A CORN LORD!
• Feels like it was written AND made by kids. 
• Good music - both spooky choir chanting in Latin and Runaway by Del Shannon - which remained stuck in my head for days after watching this.
• Ends weirdly abruptly. 

What Must Happen In The First 10 Minutes Of A Horror Movie - Steven Shea