Apparently no one can get Stephen King’s Children of the Corn right

polygon.com:

Zac Efron’s Firestarter caught a lot of hell back in early 2022 for being a crappy remake of a Stephen King book-to-film adaptation that wasn’t all that great to begin with. Well, there’s good news for that movie: The 2023 revival of theChildren of the Corn franchiseis even worse. This is the 11th film and second remake based on King’s 1977 short story about a homicidal cult of children who sacrifice their parents to appease a pagan corn god in rural Nebraska. And while it isn’t the worst filmthe franchise has to offer, that’s only because the competition is so weak.

The latest Children of the Corn was helmed by Kurt Wimmer, a journeyman type who wrote theTotal Recall and Point Break remakes, and whose last outing as a director was Ultraviolet back in 2006. That’s on brand forChildren of the Corn, a franchise that has never had any particularly distinguished filmmakers attached. Wimmer’s direction is competent enough, with tiny little flourishes of style here and there. But with a script this bad, not much can be done to save a movie. And since Wimmer also wrote it, he has no one but himself to blame.

This is a remake in name only, asChildren of the Corn keeps the concept of kids rising up to kill their parents in the name of “He Who Walks Behind the Rows,” then discards pretty much everything else. Wimmer’s first big mistake is eliminating King’s outside POV on the story, an adult couple trying to understand what went wrong in a seemingly deserted Nebraska town. He replaces them with a high-school senior named Boleyn Williams (Elena Kampouris). Boleyn is due to leave the small town of Rylstone, Nebraska, and go off to college soon. She wants to study environmental science and help Rylstone recover from a series of bad