Children of the Corn is technically one of Stephen King’s most successful adaptations given its number of sequels, but in artistic terms, it failed as a horror movie and an adaptation of the original story. In the decades since his bestselling debut novel Carrie saw him catapulted to literary stardom, Stephen King’s career has been one of ups and downs. The author has been both praised and derided by critics for his inconsistent output, and reactions to the many adaptations of his work have proven equally mixed.
For every blockbuster King adaptation like IT, there is a misfire like 2020’s The Stand miniseries. The horror legend’s unique appeal is hard to translate to film and, despite King’s work providing the basis for classic movies such as The Shining, the author has also been behind much-maligned flops like Dreamcatcher. However, only one project adapted from the work of Stephen King can boast the questionable achievement of being both a near-total artistic failure and a major financial success.
1984’s Children of the Corn was by no means a flop upon release. Quite the opposite, with the movie earning over $14 million on a paltry budget of less than $1 million, spawning ten sequels over the next two decades, and even resulting in a recent, ill-timed Children of the Corn reboot. However, the original was a failure with critics and it is not hard to see why. It has a slew of major problems in its own right and these issues are only compounded when the adaptation is compared with the original short story of the same name from King’s early collection, Night Shift.
Children of the Corn Started Too Strong
![Stephen King: Why Children of the Corn’s Movie Adaptation Failed](https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Isaac-in-Children-of-the-Corn.jpg)
The opening of Children of the Corn is a horror classic, with a child narrating the offscreen massacre of an entire town’s worth of parents by brainwashed kids. The credits depict children’s doodles of their bloody crimes while viewers are privy to a few moments of minor bloodshed, but the entire sequence is mostly played out via implication. Like a lot of King’s Lovecraft-inspired horror efforts, this unseen violence ends up being more striking and effective than the explicit shocks of other, gorier movies, and the opening is an unsettling start to a movie that fails to live up to its promise throughout the remaining runtime. Few of the child characters who make up the eponymous cult are killed as the filmmakers (correctly) assumed this would be a bridge too far for mainstream audiences. However, as there is only a trio of adult characters introduced throughout the rest of the story (two of whom are the heroes), there are few victims for the killer kids to off and, as such, precious little tension. There is little question that the main duo at the center of Children of the Corn’s action will survive to the end, which leads to the movie’s other major issue.
Children of the Corn Changed The Brutal Original Ending
![Children of the Corn - Linda Hamilton and Peter Horton](https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Children-of-the-Corn-Linda-Hamilton-and-Peter-Horton.jpg)
The Night Shift story the movie is adapted from features a truly brutal ending that the movie fails to live up to. While diverging from the source material is not always a mistake, in the case of Children of the Corn, the lack of a cruel twist leaves it without much of an ending to speak of. In a move that will surprise few King fans, the story ends with the protagonists becoming the latest sacrifices killed by the kids. From the earliest scenes, it is clear the adaptation would never have pulled off such a hopeless ending, and as such, the specter of the kids menacing grown adults looks a little absurd when the protagonists are never in any true danger. Much of what made the short story so effective is the reader’s conviction the children could not possibly actually kill the heroes, which serves to make the King movie adaptation all the more predictable, as it lacks the King short story’s bleaker edge.
The New Ending Is Abrupt And Surreal
![](https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Children-of-the-Corn.jpg)
Children of the Corn does at least change the ending of the story significantly in the absence of the main characters being killed off in the finale – but the change made for the movie is inscrutable and makes the on-the-nose moral hypocritical. Once “He Who Walks Among The Rows” is depicted and defeated, the protagonists then simply wander out of town with no plan of action at the close of the film, and Children of the Corn ends not with a dramatic shock like the earlier, classic King adaptation Carrie but rather with a dull sense of apathy. Not only that, but before this, the movie’s hero gives an impassioned speech about the cult being deranged zealots who will believe any superstitious nonsense, only for him to immediately be proven wrong when the monster they worship turns out to be very much real, thus unraveling the movie’s point.
Children of the Corn’s New Ending Reverses The Story’s Point
![Children of the Corn poster](https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Children-of-the-Corn-poster.jpg)
Until the arrival of “He Who Walks Among The Rows,” Children of the Corn is a parable about the dangers of groupthink. It is dressed up in an inter-generational horror tale, but the point of the story is clear. The malicious Isaac (John Franklin, whose spirited villainy is one of the movie’s high points) and his unthinking muscle Malachai rule the town through apocalyptic prophesying, and they are cruel fanatics who have allowed their delusional beliefs to fuel bloodshed (see also Carrie’s Ms. White, The Mist’s Ms. Carmody and many other King villains). However, this point unravels instantly when “He Who Walks Among The Rows” appears and turns Isaac to toast, proving the titular cult was in thrall to a real ancient monstrous being the entire time. This makes the actions of Isaac and Malachai more complex, if not understandable, but this is never addressed by the characters, who simply stroll out of the ghost town setting without ever mentioning they encountered and killed some kind of enigmatic elder god. It is a frustrating way to close the story and one that makes Children of the Corn a profound failure despite the movie’s sequel-prompting financial success.