Sadly Over-hyped

Good movie but grossly overrated

Absolutely the worst movie.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

Before the credits, creepy Karen Black (as June) lets a menacing kid into her isolated small-town Nebraska house. He has a deep wound in his hand, so Ms. Black goes to get some bandages. She breaks a glass, the kid gets ugly and Black wakes up. Apparently, it was a dream. After the credits, we meet Black's attractive daughter Naomi Watts (as Grace Rhodes). A medical student, Ms. Watts is taking a semester off to see what's wrong with, and hopefully help, her possibly psycho mother...As luck would have it, Watts has arrived just in time for "The Gathering". Area kids get feverish and act weird. They come from the original one, who possibly inhabits in the corn field. His story is told, later. The story is stupid, but looks like it would be fun make for all the kids in the cast. Nice to see veteran William Windom as the kindly doctor (Rob Larson) and Brent Jennings (as Donald Atkins) performs his heroic role well. When the cameras are kept still, Greg Spence directs smoothly.**** Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering (10/8/96) Greg Spence ~ Naomi Watts, Brent Jennings, Karen Black, William Windom

When children in a town mysteriously get high fevers...blah blah Naomi Watts is in this and shes hot. The film is a big improvement over COTC III: Urban Harvest or as I like to call Children of the Corn III: Trying to be Hip.This film is pretty creepy and I always remember seeing the previews for it when I was a child before Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers which is an awful in & out. It's one of the few COTC films that I remember renting in video stores along with COTC II. I developed a crush on Naomi Watts and wanted to see her in more things and later on she became the Scream Queen for Classy Horror films I never understood why all 90's films have the same sideways camera angle but hopefully I'm not the only one who has noticed this.

Children of the Corn: The Gathering (1996) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Good performances and direction help this fourth film in the series be the best so far. A registered nurse (Naomi Watts) moves back home to Nebraska to help her mother (Karen Black) who is slowly losing her mind. The town's children come down with a mysterious virus and soon they are killing adults apparently with the possessed soul of a boy who died fifty-years earlier. Normally you'd expect the fourth film in a rather mediocre series to be the pits but that's not the case here as we have a fairly good story brought to life with some nice acting and good direction. Watts steals the film as she manages to make her character very believable and shows a good strength, which allows her to carry the movie without any problems. Black is pretty much being Black as she plays the weirdo but who better to do that than her? I was also impressed with Brent Jennings as a father accused of killing him wife and William Windom as the local doctor. The actual story, as with the previous two entries, is far away from King's original short story but that might not be such a bad thing. This entry also contains some of the most brutal killings, which leads to all types of gore. One scene has a farmer getting all the equipment used to rip him apart and the every loving scythes. The red stuff is constantly pouring but it never gets in the way of the story, which believe it or not, is trying to be told here.

"Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering" is the fourth installment in the "Children of the Corn" series, and was surprisingly a decent sequel. After the horrible monster effects in Part III's finale (which almost completely ruined the movie for me) I was hoping "The Gathering" would head in a new direction, which it did. This sequel concerns a small town in the midwest. Naomi Watts plays Grace, a medical student who returns to care for her mother, and in turn, her young siblings, who begin to display a strange illness manifesting in all the town's children. Turns out that the cult of children are back, trying to recruit more young'ns (after killing their parents) into their organization for "he who walks behind the rows".No doubt, one of the most memorable things about this film is Naomi Watts' performance, who showed chops even her in her first lead role. I'm sure most people who see this will recognize her from the hit Japanese remake "The Ring." Even still, "Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering" is one of the standout films of the series for a variety of other reasons. It is well-shot, for one; while it is a direct-to-video picture, it surprisingly doesn't really look like one. There is an unnerving sleepiness to the film that plays off of the bucolic midwestern set pieces, and some phenomenally creepy sequences featuring Karen Black as Watts' agoraphobic mother. The film makes ample use of its dusty farmhouses and the sinister images of children lurking across the road.Granted, the film does show its B-movie teeth in some of the murder sequences, which are far- fetched and at times absurd, but the splatter factor here is strong and the gore effects are rather convincing overall. Another obvious but vital element to this film working as well is it does is the strength of the performances. Watts, again, is great in her first lead here, and Karen Black is phenomenal as she always is— the role leaves her plenty of room to act out the eccentricities she does so well. Even the performances from the children are above-average for a film like this.Overall, if you're a fan of the series, this is one of the better (and perhaps maybe the best) sequel. It's a "Children of the Corn" sequel, so obviously it is not a flawless film, but it is well-shot and there are a handful of genuinely effective moments to be had, and the film paces itself well without devolving into schlock. Enjoy your straight-to-video splat with a side of Watts and Karen Black— how can you go wrong? 7/10.