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Children of the Corn Directed by Kurt Wimmer. Written by Kurt Wimmer

Children of the Corn has been remade twice now and had a buttload of sequels of all quality. This little bitty short story has inspired film after film after film. What about this story draws people back? It's about a small Nebraska town where possessed children murder all the adults in their town to appease He Who Walks behind the rows. A couple stumble upon an escapee and when seeking help, they run into the crazed children and this diminutive preacher leading the way. Now it sounds interesting in theory but the problem that has remained throughout is that kids are not scary. They are not scary in the slightest.

This kind of rectifies that a little bit. Now this is not a retelling of the original film and the short story. It is telling the story of what happened to the town originally. The town is dying. The corn is dying. The children are watching as the adults are making decisions to change the fundamental structure of the town they grew up in and they have no say in what happens. This is very much an allegory for climate change. They're trying to change it up from a more religious angle. If you're going to remake it, bring something different to the party. It works sort of. That's what this movie does. There are snippets of interesting story ideas trying desperately to claw out.

I know the behind the scenes turmoil with production shutting down due to Covid and many scenes being piecemeal. They actually did a fairly good job considering the limitations. I try not to grade on a curve but sometimes you have to. What would this movie be like with no limitations and made exactly as Kurt Wimmer wanted?

This movie doesn't work without its two leads. They're child actors and that's astonishing when you think about it. Kate Moyer plays Eden, the leader of the children. She has a way with her words that shows she has that dichotomy in her demeanor. She is finally speaking up and has no qualm about killing to get her way. She has convinced all of the children except for a few to change this town. She is dangerous and unpredictable. You never really know what she is going to do. I think she has a bright future ahead. She rides a horse and just commands the screen. It was incredibly impressive.

The other performer that Eden plays off of is Bo played by Elena Kampouris. She is 17 trying to survive with her brother watching her parents' marriage fall apart. She speaks up for the town and wants to enact change. She is carrying the weight of her family on her shoulders so when things get grim and dark really quick, her vulnerability she wears on her sleeves.

You want her to succeed. You want her to save the town and save the adults. You're cheering for her even though the plot hits predictability and you need those taped pieces of story to smooth it over. It wants to throw you into a monster flick as it progresses to its conclusion. It wants to crank you into a thrill ride but I'm not sure that was the best way to go. Ambiguity could have made more things more terrifying. This movie is not scary. I'm not sure it is trying to even go down that road. I was intrigued by the design of He Who Walks. It feels more like an environmental horror flick in the style of Prophecy with its ManBearPig.

I have to say this was an interesting failure of a flick. I also think we're done with Children of the Corn. The story has been told in all the ways it can be told.

I give this movie a C.

Eat Brains Love Directed by Rodman Flender. Written by Mike Herro and David Strauss

Sometimes you can just tell when somebody who is far outside of the teenage realm writes and makes a movie trying to be cool and hip with those kids. Yeah here we are with the film equivalent of the Steve Buscemi meme. I do admire the effort to make this flow with hyperactive energy. There is style to spare and that is impressive in a subject matter picked over to death.

Eat Brains Love is about two teenagers, one who has a crush on the other who become zombies and embark on a road trip while being chased by a governmental agency filled with psychics and trigger happy agents as they find an underground community of zombies trying to live their lives. It's your standard issue road trip teen comedy and it also isn't one of those. Naturally the guy is a pot smoking loser who can't bring himself to tell the girl how he feels. Naturally she's the popular cheerleader with the quarterback bully as his boyfriend. All standard issue boilerplate stuff up to this point. Now how you become a zombie in this film is very different than in previous zombie flicks.

You become a zombie through sex. Much like the slow moving, always persistent ghosts of It Follows, it passed through sex. They don't really do much with this other than make a few jokes. The jokes provide some chuckles but mostly groans because it is trying entirely too hard. It is filled with people doing silly things for a joke and it hits those beats you've seen before. It is a fairly short film although not as short as Puppet Master:Doktor Death(59 minutes). It doesn't wear out its welcome but you can also tell it doesn't have much story to tell either.

I will say it has a strange opinion on women. They don't seem to have much beyond falling for the stoner. The psychic chasing them and his cheerleading crush. They exist only as it pertains to the stoner character. This is fine, I suppose but it would have made it a more interesting film to flesh them out. They have to be more than archetypes to feel real and the jokes will land more in that way.

The performances are all good. Patrick Fabian from Better Call Saul knows how to do smarmy like nobody's business. He is always a welcome sight on screen for me. Sarah Yarkin was a pleasant presence. She has some comedic chops and she was better here than in Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

It does revel in the gore. It has plenty of intestine chomping for anybody who enjoys that. The make up effects work but then again they aren't called on to do much. This movie is fine. It serves its purposes. It doesn't do anything that hasn't already been done and you might not be annoyed by the characters.

This is available to watch for free on FreeVee and Tubi. Tubi is a veritable wonderland of a streaming service.

I give this movie a C.

Royal Jelly Written and directed by Sean Riley

Bumblebees, honey bees, bees of all types infect every section of this movie. Her late mother was a beekeeper and loved the creatures so she found herself drawn to them as well. She is an outcast and a loner. A mysterious substitute teacher comes into town and Aster(a bee loving lonely girl) and this adult steal off into the night, no questions asked.

This lady is not what she seems. She appears to be grooming Aster for something important and it is something that has to do with bees. This is a movie that starts out going in the direction of a teenage revenge film like Carrie. It is a bit of a bait and switch that goes on once the lady of the bee manor sweeps Aster off of her feet.

We begin to encroach with bits of body horror and honestly this was the most fascinating aspect of the movie. It doesn't have enough of a special makeup effects budget to really dig beneath this horror and prey upon what it might be like. It does dwell on the more grotesque elements of the insect world and especially bee queens. It leaves a bitter taste in your mouth because when you take it out of the insect world and apply it to unwilling human beings, it changes things.

The movie also wants us to believe in Aster's relationship with the first boy, not the cartoon cowboy. It doesn't really give much in the way of character development. You get one romantic swoon under the moon. That's not enough to really believe in the dilemma being presented here.

While I do admire the filmmaker trying something this off the wall, there's a lot that doesn't work. In order to even get to the house where Aster is being groomed for her queen bee duties, the story jumps through a bunch of hoops and ignores things that any rational person might ask themselves. There's a suspicious lack of law enforcement for a teenage runaway. Nobody seems to question what happened to Aster. Not her loving father or she demon stepmother. Nobody.

There are several opportunities for Aster to read the red flags ever prevalent.

She ignores them and even invents new excuses to stay in what is obviously especially once a cartoon cowboy shows up, is a very dangerous place. Where is her dad? Does nobody care that Aster just disappeared with an adult teacher?

I had just too many questions and that fragile suspension of disbelief became frayed and eventually snapped in two, nor the twain should meet again. Royal Jelly does try. The camera work is strange in the fact that it is either super close up or shaking tremendously. I was confused by the style that Sean Riley was going for. The destruction of the hive by the bullies was beautifully shot and even went for a slow motion balletic tone. Not all was lost with this. It was just a missed opportunity.

I give Royal Jelly a C.