Like a virus that keeps coming back but growing weaker each time, “Children of the Corn” is now a horror movie that lacks the strength to infect you with even a speck of fear.
The original strain of the virus was Stephen King’s short story — published in 1977, at the heart of his shivery heyday.
The tale of a group of Nebraska farm-town children who worship a demon that lives in the local cornfields, it was like a slasher version of “Lord of the Flies,” with a touch of the creepiness of “The Wicker Man.” The kids killed the adults around them, but the scariest thing about them is that they’d become a cult.
The cornfield demon, known as He Who Walks Behind the Rows, was less a monster than a force, one that spoke to gathering forces in our society — impulses of religious zealotry and intolerance that were
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