Skip to main content

Children of the Corn

So I know that I finished Night Shift, but I realized that there's still one more thing I'd like to talk about that I never did in a previous post, and that thing is the short story, "Children of the Corn". "Children of the Corn" was the cover story of Night Shift (at least on my copy it was) and because of this is like to give it some recognition.

After doing a little bit of research before I read the story I learned that the story has been turned into a movie. I also learned that this must've been a pretty popular movie when everyone was like, "Hey 'Children of the Corn'? I'VE SEEN THAT MOVIE'", every time they see the cover.  Anyways, let's get to the story.

One of the main villains, Malachai with a crucified skeleton of a police officer in the background
(as depicted from the movie)
"Children of the Corn" is about a married couple, Burt and Vicky, who are constantly bickering about something. One day while they were out bickering over something on their road trip from Boston to the East Coast, they were passing by rows upon rows of corn fields. Vicky even complains about the corn, saying, "This is why we got off the turnpike. So we could look at 300 hundred miles of corn." Their argument was cut short, however, when a lone boy suddenly is popped right out of the corn field and into the front of the van. Now Burt and Vicky are forced to take the boy's body to the nearest town for burial. This wouldn't be such a problem if the closest town was run by psycho children who murder adults as their religion. Of  course, neither Burt or Vicky didn't knew this. You can probably guess what's going to happen next, I mean this is a horror novel.

"Children of the Corn" was a good story but it wasn't my favorite. The story was creepy but it had a really generic plot: psycho killers on the loose and helpless main characters are on the run. The plot wasn't as interesting as the other ones found in the book. But I still liked it. Stephen King again demonstrates his writing especially in the characterization. Burt is a very stubborn man as a result of his and Vicky's dysfunctional relationship, and  Vicky is even more headstrong making her not likable at all. (The only thing she had going for her was common sense to leave the town.). Both of their attitudes are the sole reason why they were thrown into this unfortunate situation, and because of this, the reader automatically dislikes one the two.

Overall, I would rate this story a 7/10.

The movie surprisingly had a sequel called "The Last Sacrifice". Want more information? Here's a link
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106557/

Comments

  1. UnknownNovember 14, 2014 at 8:11 AM

    I have heard many interesting things about this book and all the short stories. After reading your posts, I am convinced this would be a good book to read.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Foreshadowing in "Strawberry Spring" - Night Shift

This story, "Strawberry Spring", was actually a story in Night Shift  that I read quite a while ago. 129 pages ago to be exact. I wanted to post about this story a while ago, but I couldn't get around to it because of "Battleground". Anyways, I enjoyed this story because it employed many writing elements that caught my attention. In this post I will review one of them, foreshadowing. "Strawberry Spring" is about life on a community college campus that is haunted by a serial killer dubbed "Springheel Jack". The campus is brought strawberry spring, a sort of "fake" spring. This spring brought along an occasional thick fog, and with this fog brought Springheel Jack. Every time the fog shrouded over the campus, a person was killed. It is unknown who the killer is until it is revealed in the end of the book. WARNING * SPOILER ALERT * THE KILLER IS THE NARRATOR * SPOILER ALERT * WARNING That's right the killer i...
1 comment
Read more

"Night Shift - Battleground" by Stephen King

I don't know much about this movie, but  I heard it's about a rubber wheel that kills people. I dunno, don't ask. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ For this blog post, I will still be covering the book Night Shift  by Stephen King. Right now I am a little over 100 pages and honestly, the stories have been getting to be a little lackluster lately. I mean, there's been one called "The Mangler" and it was about a possessed ironing machine that enjoyed killing people. Yeah. Kinda like that movie over there ------------> Anyways, let's get on with Night Shift . After all the dumb stories about killer rats and ironing machines and whatnot, I reached a story that I knew I would enjoy at the very beginning. It's called "Battleground", and it starts on page 117. And I don't like this story because it was actually scary like it was supposed to be. I liked it because of its absolutely novel idea of conflict. In "Battleground" you follow a man na...
2 comments
Read more

Beginning Ingledove

Welp, back at blogging, I suppose... The book that I picked randomly off a bookshelf and will share with you today is called Ingledove  by Marly Youmans. If you want to ask me what I'll expect from this book then expect a pathetic response since I've only read the summary. The summary tells about two siblings who happen upon a fabled civilization in the mountains call "Adantis" (Atlantis?) where Ingledove's brother is very vaguely described to be kidnapped or taken or stabbed. I don't know the details, the summary says "drawn to a place of death", so maybe it's a literal place of death? Anyways, Ingledove is caught in  quest to save her brother from whatever it is that's killing him. What I expect is a fantasy adventure where the main character must undergo several trials in order to reach her goal. The author of the book, Marly Youmans, is an author I've never heard of before. After finding a Wikipedia article about her I found that...
5 comments
Read more