And finally we say goodbye to the 90s. I'm actually fine with that. Once this series took itself exclusively to rental stores, things have been getting darker (in texture, I mean, not edgier or more disturbing) and more boring. I had hoped that Children of the Corn 666: Isaac's Return was signalling a positive shift (relatively,ok?). We haven't had a strong effort toward continuity (eliding Part II's weak attempt) since now, nor have we had a franchise "player" return, although the revolving door of future-whoms was pretty fun. Let's do this, Part VI.
Then those hopes fizzled out like a fart in the shower. What a grainy, bleak, pointless, boring piece of shit this was. It felt like one of the SciFi Originals you might waste an afternoon on, except maybe with a pair of gory scenes and some swearsies, but not enough to warrant wasting your time when you could be playing Canasta with grandma. With The Howling, I had absolutely no idea what insanity to expect from film to film, but Children of the Corn has offered a grim rebuttal: here's children, here's some corn - now eat it, you prick! It's worth reminding that this is a franchise of nine-and-a-half films that has somehow spawned from one single short story. There wasn't a lot there to begin with: crops, kids, a demon, unwary bystanders. And I refuse to believe the first film was such a runaway success that legions of fans demanded to see more. WTF.
But I digress; let's get this over with. PoutyLips is driving cross-country in a shitty T-Bird to scenic Gatlin, Nebraska (wow, this is our first trip back to that little hamlet). And I swear, she is not two millimeters inside city limits before phantoms, demons, crazy people, and all manner of Bad Foreboding implore her to get the fuck out of there, but she won't. Hooper-Dee-Doo! PoutyLips, you see, is on a mission to find her mama, who we discover is Nancy Allen and an original character from the first film. The knocked-up one, I guess? I don't remember, and neither should you. But seriously, nothing happens in the first 45 minutes here, other than PoutyLips being scared and harassed by local oddjobs, at whom she gapes like an idiot. Gatlin doesn't seem to have any civic infrastructure, but by god they have a fully-housed insane asylum with one doctor and a few other rotting buildings (and cornfields, natch). 
It turns out that, shocker, the original herald of the corn, Isaac, is still alive despite being rocketed through the air and turned into a floury zombie in Numero Uno, though he was comatose until PoutyLips rolled into town. Apparently the corn culties, who are more like twenty-somethings of the corn, have a really confusing issue to deal with: Is Isaac their leader now that he's awake? Or are they putting their efforts into revealing a new corn messiah, the first-born of the original children? I don't know, and neither will you. Isaac apparently had a son while he was comatose (ew), so naturally we assume this is the aforementioned firstborn and not some kind of red herring. Hannah, meanwhile, meets some dude we'll call Hunky Studlove, who pops his leather collar and offers her help, because he's definitely not the real bad guy and we definitely need to keep fiddlefarting in the cornfields and pretend there's a real mystery at hand, right!?
This one was awful. I had prematurely assigned it to the bottom rung of an already-terrible franchise before a pair of amusing moments in the closing half hour almost redeem it - a girl gets scythed completely in half (top-down) by cranky cultists, then the girl's boyfriend self-scythes in an unrelated gesture. Hannah and Hunky Studlove have really inadvisable sex in a horse stall in a barn. A horse stall!! Nothing gets me randy like the smell of offal and the feeling of hay needles poking my bare ass. Woo! He Who Plows Behind the Rows, amirite fellas?? Swish! Oh, and I couldn't make this up, but a cuckoo clock pops out right at the moment of orgasm! I guess this was because of some yada about a prophecy of a child being conceived at midnight, but I think it works better out of context. So, Hunky Studlove IS He Who Hollas Behind the Rows, and he uses telekinesis powers to kill folks, including Isaac before he....deep breath....randomly makes out with an insane man and then blows up. Hannah and her mom escape, although Hannah is knocked up with demonseed...
So, like I said, the last few minutes of this one are quite a ride. But really, what was the point here in returning to Gatlin and Isaac? There was a fight over the cult's leadership, which we've already seen, and the plot revolved around some child of prophecy horseshit. What exactly was this Chosen Corn-One going to do? Use telekinesis and be a crazy prophet-monster, maybe? Exactly like we saw in Parts II, III, IV, AND V ALREADY!? I will say good day to you, movie.
The Gaffer's Rating: 1 Cornbread out of 4.
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