Review of Children of the Corn: The Gathering

This film begins with a young medical college student by the name of "Grace Rhodes" (Naomi Watts) returning home to Grand Island, Nebraska because her mother "June Rhodes" (Karen Black) is suffering from a nervous condition which has seriously impacted her ability to take care of her other young children. After examining her, the town physician "Dr. Rob Larsen" (William Windom) believes that June's problems are directly related to the nightmares she is experiencing and prescribes some medication to help her regain some much needed sleep. This makes sense to Grace who offers her services at the local clinic during the day while the kids are at school before returning back home to take care of everyone in the afternoon. Unfortunately, not long afterward all of the children begin to develop strange fevers which soon overwhelms the local clinic and requires both Dr. Larsen and Grace to devote all their time there. To make matters even worse, strange murders begin occurring around town and the children seem to be somehow involved. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this film was a definite improvement upon the previous picture in that it maintained the tension from start-to-finish. Admittedly, there were a couple of weak scenes here and there but even so I thought it was worth the time spent to watch it and for that reason I have rated it accordingly. Average.