Simply A Masterpiece

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

Blistering performances.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

This is a very scary movie. The first 3 Children of the Corn movies are very scary. But this is scarier. It has a great story line. It also has great acting. Children of the Corn Revelation which the 7th Children of the Corn movie is better. Still this is a great horror movie. See it.

This one is a bit LAME! Josiah comes to town as "He Who Walks Behind The Rows" dressed like none other than Issac (from the original film). Issac was a reverend/preacher and acted as such. This Josiah does not preach, he only gives all of the children a very high fever then, suddenly, a handful of them kill. Latti-daddi-dah what a film. It's more of a slasher film and does not feel like a real supernatural horror as it should - like the first film did and still does today.This film is focused on a young nurse coming back to town to help her seemly gone crazy mom (played by the wonderful Karen Black) that it distracts and takes away from what "Children of the Corn" is all about. What should have been done for this film instead: a preachy Josiah to all the kids in order to reflect the first film and the heart of the story.I only watch this one just because Stephen King's name is attached to it and to *try* to enjoy another CotC film. :/ 4/10

Before the credits, creepy Karen Black (as June) lets a menacing kid into her isolated small-town Nebraska house. He has a deep wound in his hand, so Ms. Black goes to get some bandages. She breaks a glass, the kid gets ugly and Black wakes up. Apparently, it was a dream. After the credits, we meet Black's attractive daughter Naomi Watts (as Grace Rhodes). A medical student, Ms. Watts is taking a semester off to see what's wrong with, and hopefully help, her possibly psycho mother...As luck would have it, Watts has arrived just in time for "The Gathering". Area kids get feverish and act weird. They come from the original one, who possibly inhabits in the corn field. His story is told, later. The story is stupid, but looks like it would be fun make for all the kids in the cast. Nice to see veteran William Windom as the kindly doctor (Rob Larson) and Brent Jennings (as Donald Atkins) performs his heroic role well. When the cameras are kept still, Greg Spence directs smoothly.**** Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering (10/8/96) Greg Spence ~ Naomi Watts, Brent Jennings, Karen Black, William Windom

***SPOILERS*** The 4th installment of "He who walks behind the Rows" who's never even mentioned, much less seen, once in the movie. We do have a corn filed in it that has really nothing to do with the plot but has the local town's sheriff Biggs of Grand Island Nebraska, Richard Gross, slaughtered in it while out at night looking for runaway Marcus Atkins, Lewis Flanagan III. Marcus went a bit nuts after he was infected with a mysterious illness that made him forget who he is and start thinking that he's in fact someone else. Like all the other kids of Grand Island who were infected by it.We have pre-med student Grace Rhodes, Naoma Watts, traveling home to Grand Island to visit her crazy mom June, Karen Black, and her 14 year old brother James, Mark Salling,and younger sister Margaret, Jamie Renee Smith, for the summer. It's then that Grace gets a job with the town physician Doc Larson, William Windom, whom she worked for before going away to collage. It's at Doc's clinic that strange things begin to happen with it suddenly being overcrowded with children who came down with high fevers and suffering from mercury poisoning. No one knows what's causing these strange maladies until we get the low down towards the end of the movie from the elderly and almost senile Nock sisters Jane & Rosa, Salle Ellis & Marietta Marich, about some boy preacher named Josiah who was kept young by his followers by stuffing him with mercury in order to stunt his growth.It's seems that the preacher boy was later burned at the stake by his disappointed, in him growing up, followers and is now back seeking revenge by getting the children of the town to slaughter all the adults for what they, or their parents and grand parents, did to him. There's also the side story to who's to replace this Josiah who's to come from the same background that he came from: In being abounded by his or her parents.Very confusing story especially in what the purpose in it is of showing grasshoppers or locust as evil messenger's of the devil without explaining why. We do in fact have some very shocking slasher, with the use of a scythe, scenes in it that makes the movie worth watching if you have the stomach to see them through. Even these scenes get a bit overdone with in one case poor Doc Larson who was cut in two earlier in the film getting shot to pieces by his assistant Grace, who didn't recognize him, with a shotgun as his other half, the bottom part of his body, was lying in state.***SPOILERS*** It's Mr, Donald Atkins, Brant Jennings, young Marcus's dad who finally finds the magic bullet, filled with mercury, that can put an end to this horror. Atkins together with Grace drives down to the old Spelling Barn where the possessed town children are holding a rally, or human sacrifice, in order to save them from themselves. Even though Donald did the driving through the corn field it was Grace who did the blasting with her shotgun who finally put an end to this bloody, with all the kids cutting their hands open and dripping their blood into what looked like a wooden punchbowl, insanity. That's until the next cornball "Children of the Corn" flick comes to video store of theater near you to start it all over again.