Rish Outfield's reviews
The idea of evil children is endlessly fascinating (see The Bad Seed or The Shining, or "It's A Good Life," or The Omen or The Good Son, for example), but they're even more frightening in groups, such as in Village of the Damned and Children of the Damned, or any of the other twenty Children of the Corn movies.
One of the nice things about this film was how close it paid attention to details (locations, names, ideas) from the first movie, to make it truly seem like a sequel, though it was made years later.
I sometimes get flak (not Roberta) over the skull 'Unfulfilled Promise of Nudity.' People accuse us of being sexist, and usually use that category to back up their claim. To anyone in that camp, I suggest you watch Children of the Corn 2. You'll see annoyingly 'clever' editing, strategically placed arms, inconvenient camera angles, and just plain illogic, used to titillate but avoid any nudity.
The main kid-villain wasn't near as convincing or frightening as Isaac was in the original. And what WAS the final sacrifice? I just didn't get it.
Best Scare: A human hand is discovered during a (strangely nudity-free) love-making scene.
Posted: February 25th, 2000

The tyranist's thoughts
I love to see follow-up movies that were made nearly ten years after the original. It just makes sense to make a movie that immediately follows the first one when all of the actors from the first one have aged by ten years. This one doesn't do a terrible job of following up the first movie, but it does have a couple of failings. Failing number one is that they try to explain the reason why the first movie happened with a scientific exploration of corn mold. This can never work. Most sequels begin to suck when they try to explain one of their predecessors. See Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation for proof. This one is not nearly that bad, but it tries. Failing number two is that the producers clearly felt that the first movie tapped into the child horror audience (okay, early teen). With this in mind they oversimplified some of the relationships and proceeded to tease us with sexual taunts and near nude scenes. This is infuriating. If you are going to be exploring those avenues, explore them. There are tasteful ways to handle them and then there is the blatant we-are-trying-not-to-offend-your-grandmother kind. This was the latter. Other than those two points, I had a good time watching the movie and will probably end up checking out the rest of the series at some point.
Posted: February 25th, 2000