Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest

The Children of the Corn series takes a turn to the large city of Chicago as another evil child plans to murder anyone over 18 years of age.

COTC3 begins in Gatlin with an abusive father brutally murdered thanks to He Who Walks Behind the Rows. Shortly after, Eli and his brother Josh are adopted by a middle-aged couple in Chicago. Viewers see early on that Eli is clearly the new leader of the demonic presence that plagued small town Nebraska. He starts brainwashing the teenagers at the high school he and his brother attend, turning them against all of the adults at the school and in their lives. Josh along with his friends Malcolm and Maria see what Eli is doing and will have to stop him before the entire city is overrun with murderous children following He Who Walks Behind the Rows.

I do want to like this third film more than I actually did. It was pretty creative to take the series out of the cornfields and into inner city Chicago. We also got a strong child leader in Eli which was a bit of step up from Micah in part 2 when it comes to the creep factor. In addition to that, there were some very good makeup/special effects work done by Screaming Mad George. However, looking at it as a whole film I found it to be painfully average and slow moving. Some of the murders were done very well, like the social worker being stalked in her office building and a dinner table murder scene involving cockroaches. Effort was put into that aspect of the movie.

The acting was suspect in a few areas, but the majority of people who had to perform actually did. Daniel Cerny was almost too perfect in this evil role he played being the next child leader of He Who Walks Behind the Rows. He delivered in every creepy way. Nancy Lee Grahn was very good as the foster mother but wasn’t used much at all. A weaker addition for me was Ron Melendez who played Eli’s older brother Josh which is unfortunate since his role was major.

Overall, Children of the Corn III is an average instalment in the series. I liked the idea of bringing the rural story into the city of Chicago, and the special effects were top notch. But it failed to be as compelling as the first two films.