Underwhelming - Day 6

For the longest time, I've always said, it's hard to take Stephen King books and make them into movies. Because he truly is a master of horror, it can be tricky to translate his imagery onto the big screen. Don't get me wrong, it can be done, but I find myself loving the movies that are more dramatic and suspenseful than straight up horror. Great examples of this would be Delores Claiborne, Carrie, Misery, The Green Mile and The Shining.

Horrorfest 2013 had me being adventurous. I selected a unique blend of movies, some I'd seen and others I hadn't, and as you might have noticed, I was excited for this weekend. Unfortunately, last night I chose two  stinkers from the 1980's. The movies were Christine and Children of the Corn, and ended up being a huge let down for the wrap up party for the Stephen King weekend.

When I was thirteen, Christine was one of my favourite books. But a great book doesn't necessarily make a great movie. Because this was directed by John Carpenter I feel bad giving it a thumbs down, like I might be burned at the stake for saying something he put his golden hands on is crap. Sadly, that's exactly what I'm saying, even if he is sacrilegious to horror buffs the world over. Between crappy acting and a weak plot line, I was left feeling unfulfilled. In the book, the main plot was that Christine's previous owner Roland LeBay was so poisoned that his evilness possessed the car. The movie decided to go another route, which failed to explain where Christine's need to kill came from, even why she was doing it. With this one decision, the entire movie was derailed.

What could have been a truly genius film fell short.

Second was Children of the Corn. I do remember being terrified of this movie when I was a child and, for what its worth, it isn't terrible. Like Christine, though, it was left with bad acting and a terrible screen writer. While John Carpenter purposely cut out a pivotal piece of plot from Christine, director Fritz Kiersch apparently didn't change a bloody thing from the book version of COTC. The issue with this is, because Children of the Corn was only a short story, one would actually need to add elements in to have enough substance to make a feature film out of it.

If you watch this movie and aren't left with a lot of questions, then you clearly have a better imagination than I do. This suffered a lack of meat and meander all over the place. Don't get me wrong, the idea is great, it simply wasn't developed enough to make it a ninety-two minute movie. Lastly, what the hell was with Isaac's voice? Was that really necessary?

In the end, I can't really recommend either of these movies. This hurts me more than it hurts you.