Manthast Absolutely amazing

Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Tobias Burrows It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

wes-connors 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

movieman_kev Grace (Naomi Watts) comes home to Grand Island, Nebraska to take care of her seemingly mentally ill mother, not knowing that all the children of said hometown have come under a unknowable affliction that has them murdering the older generation. All of this,of course, has jack all to do with any of the previous 3 films in the series.The acting runs from merely acceptable to sub-par, the plot line is extremely predictable, and the scares are nonexistent. Naomi would go on to decidedly better horror fare with The Ring films, while this franchise would continue to limp along in squaller never even reaching the low standard of mediocrity. And to think this was actually one of the 'better' COTC sequels. Chew on THAT for awhile.My Grade: D+

sol1218 ***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.

udar55 Bless me father, for I have sinned. I saw this year's ago and decided to revisit it. Please forgive me. Totally dismissing part three's open ending, the filmmakers set this one in a small Midwestern town with a kid-to-parent ratio of, let's say, twenty to one. When a young girl (Naomi Watts, who hasn't done anything noteworthy since this...ha!) returns to look after her ill mother, things start to go wrong. A ghost boy that lives in a well begins to slowly seize the minds of the town's children. Overcome with boiling fevers, the children eventually turn into bloodthirsty cob gobblers. You can guess where this all goes, right?While watching COTCIV, a rather intoxicated friend quipped, "Well, I see children and I see corn and that's about it." I couldn't have said it better. Bearing no connection to the other films other than those facts, this is just another mid-90s shameless Weinsteins direct-to-video victory parade to cash in on Stephen King's name and any semi-successful property they owned. I seriously suggest King starts spinning now because he is going to be doing it eternally once he is seven feet under. There is some decent Sam Raimi-esquire camera work and the film is surprisingly gory. But can't make up for ridiculous bits like a Sheriff following a kid into a spooky cornfield in the middle of the night. Let him rot in there with the scarecrows! It is past his bedtime anyway. Director Greg Spence also puked out THE PROPHECY II for Miramax/Dimension before deciding to end his career as a helmer (he recently was associate producer on HBO's JOHN ADAMS; I'm waiting for Spence to announce JOHN ADAMS II: THE RECKONING.) I quit the series cold turkey after this one.