Editorials
Isaac, Malachi and He Who Walks Behind the Rows: ‘Children of the Corn’ at 35
Stephen King remains as prescient a cultural force in 2019 as he was back in the 80s when a substantial body of his work was adapted to film. This year alone, there are several new properties in development or on the cusp of release (here’s looking at you, Pet Sematary). It seems appropriate, then, that one of the early seminal film adaptations of a King property is celebrating a milestone: Children of the Corn is 35 years young.
Adapted from a 1977 short story of the same name, Children of the Corn debuted in theatres on March 9, 1984. The film stars Linda Hamilton and Peter Horton as Vicky and Burt, a young couple on a cross country road trip en route to Seattle. In rural Nebraska, the pair are involved in a traffic accident: they hit a young boy who runs onto the highway with their car. In an attempt to save his life, Vicki and Burt stumble into the unusual town of Gatlin, where there are no adults and the only inhabitants are cult-worshipping children beholden to an unseen deity named He Who Walks Behind The Rows.
Children of the Corn preys on horror’s pervasive fear that children will become malevolent and turn on their parents. It’s a not uncommon theme, though it is more often relegated to a single nefarious individual (The Bad Seed, The Good Son, Orphan, etc) or there is some kind of extraterrestrial or viral element (Village of the Damned, Cooties).
Where Children of the Corn differs is in the unconventional nature of the relationship between the age groups: Vicki and Burt don’t know the children of Gatlin so they have no qualms about fighting for their survival (typically parents will attempt to negotiate or reconcile with their kids, which never goes well for them). Of course, since it is 1984, there’s an obvious gendered dynamic in the way that Kurt is more outwardly aggressive, whereas Vicki takes a shine to Job (Robby Kiger) and his sister Sarah (Anne Marie McEvoy), the sole children who refuse to follow cult-leader Isaac (John Franklin) and his right-hand lackey, Malachi (Courtney Gains).
Arguably one of the film’s most enduring and impressive scenes is its opening, in which the citizens of Gatlin exit church and head to the local diner for food. As Isaac watches from outside, wearing his trademark wide brimmed black Preacher’s hat, the children inside lock the doors and go to work dispatching the adults in a variety of gruesome ways (poison, stabbings and even a hand in the meat grinder!) In this short five minute scene, the power and influence of Isaac is laid bare, the age discrepancy between victims and aggressors is established and Sarah’s prophetic dreams are introduced.
Rewatching Children of the Corn 35 years later produces a bit of an odd disconnect. While the foundation for a solid horror film is evident, particularly the idea of murderous child cultists and a paranormal-religious antagonist who manifests in the corn, the film itself isn’t particularly memorable.
There is a lot of residual goodwill for Linda Hamilton, who at the time was on the cusp of her big break-through in The Terminator the same year. Her character Vicki, however, is unexceptional; Vicki is a fairly one-dimension character regulated by fairly traditional gender norms. For most of the film, she acts as the stand-in mother for two orphaned children and then she is relegated to a typical damsel in distress when she is abducted by Malachi so she can be sacrificed (This leads to one of my all-time favourite horror lines, when Malachi yells to Burt: “Outlander, we have your woman!”)
Horton is even more forgettable. Burt is an aggressive hot-headed bore and Horton plays him without much charisma or likeability. He’s a generic action lead…except that he’s in a horror film.
The villainous children fare best. With his shock of red hair, puberty-cracking voice and significant height difference over Franklin, Gains is memorable for a variety of reasons. As an antagonist, Malachi is an inherently hateable character whom audiences can root against, although his desperation for power and lack of patience for Isaac is surprisingly relatable.
The most striking element of Children of the Corn, however, is John Franklin’s performance as Isaac. The actor suffered from growth hormone deficiency as a child, so his height as an adult was barely five feet tall, which allowed him to play the villainous head of the Corn cult when he was 24 years old (Fun fact: he’s also Cousin It in The Adams Family). The aforementioned hat and preacher’s costume, as well as Franklin’s mature and commanding performance, establish the character as a legitimate threat to the more physically imposing adults. Isaac’s unwavering self-confidence, his moral superiority as the supposed human avatar of He Who Walks Behind The Rows and his authoritative religious hysteria is highly watchable (contrast this with the less compelling performances by Kiger and McEvoy, who are clearly novice child actors).
Thirty-five years later, it’s still a little surprising that Children of the Corn heralded the start of a ten film franchise that continues to churn out new entries every few years. Not unlike other belaboured horror franchises caught up in intellectual property loops (ie: Hellraiser), the majority of the far-less ambitious Corn sequels share only the slightest connective tissue with the original film or King’s source material. And yet, there’s an undeniable appeal in the idea of murderous children lurking in the corn rows, waiting to murder unsuspecting adults who wander into their midst.
Perhaps one day we’ll bear witness to the return of He Who Walks Behind The Rows in a film that does the premise justice. Until then, stay away from the corn if you should find yourself in rural Nebraska.
I first heard about The Mandela Catalogue through a couple of nephews who were obsessed with the ARG’s sinister mythology. It was only after watching Wendigoon’s in-depth analysis of the series that I realized just how deep this rabbit hole goes.
In fact, I’d already been exposed to the nightmarish visuals of Alex Kister’s YouTube creation for years at that point without even realizing that it was the origin of several viral “cursed images” and spooky memes that had leaked into the wider internet – with this viral element actually being a part of the Catalogue’s overarching narrative.
Flash-forward to 2026 and the unprecedented success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms has led to Hollywood betting on horrific internet properties with existing fanbases, which means that Kister’s unique hybrid of both religious and analog horror is finally headed to the big screen with a script written by Kister himself alongside Tyler Clifton.
While this news shouldn’t be too surprising if you’ve been keeping up with the ongoing success of The Mandela Catalogue (both myself and Wendigoon having previously predicted that the series would inevitably make the jump to theaters one day), plenty of horror fans are likely confused as to why so many folks are excited for what appears to be a Hollywood adaptation of a series of creepy .jpeg images under a VHS filter.
With that in mind, today I’d like to invite fellow readers to accompany me as I explore the origins of Alex Kister’s viral hit and attempt to explain exactly why we should all be excited about the Mandela Catalogue adaptation!
From High School Writing Project to Internet Horror Phenomenon
The first seeds of The Mandela Catalogue were sown when Kister was still in high school and developed a writing project subverting religious tropes in a world where biblical history had been altered by demonic forces. A little while later, Kister came across an analog horror contest on Reddit and decided to adapt his ideas into a standalone video where he would edit a religious kids’ cartoon –The Beginner’s Bible: The Nativity, to be specific- into something far creepier. This is how the iconic Overthrone video was born, with this viral short film taking on a life of its own as fans demanded more eerie content from Kister.
Though the video was originally meant to be a one-and-done sort of affair, with Kister actually regretting some of its primitive visuals and considering the editing amateurish and “YouTube-Poop-like” when compared to his current standards, fan reaction and free time during the COVID-19 pandemic encouraged the (then) seventeen-year-old filmmaker to continue producing content set in this same world. The Mandela Catalogue name was inspired by the Mandela Effect conspiracy theory, as the series would slowly begin to explore the subtle horror of alternate histories.
Inspired by existential dread brought on by extended periods of quarantine as well as a personal crisis of faith, Kister continued to expand his alternate timeline where the rise of Christianity had been prevented by what was presumably the Devil disguised as the Archangel Gabriel. This alternate course of fictional events led to the existence of certain paranormal anomalies that had come to be accepted as “normal” by the 1990s, which is why most of the series’ supernatural horror is presented in such a matter-of-fact manner.
Most of this background information and religious lore is delivered by increasingly cryptic broadcasts and in-universe PSAs, as well as the occasional found footage video, that often have to be decoded by clever viewers. Of course, it’s the consistently disturbing imagery that made the series so popular – much of which was originally created by Kister on a smartphone!
The Alternates: Horror’s Most Unsettling Modern Monsters
The show’s early episodes mostly take place within the fictional Mandela County in Wisconsin and depict life in a world where demonic entities are capable of using media to enter our reality. This process usually involves scaring victims into killing themselves and then repurposing their bodies as horrific doppelgangers referred to as “Alternates”. This terrifying phenomenon has become so common that local police already have specialized procedures in place to deal with the issue, though this usually consists of simply ignoring calls for help so as to avoid spreading so-called “Metaphysical Awareness Disorder” any further.
Over time, Kister would expand this mythology and incorporate different kinds of Alternates into the mix, though the story never stopped deconstructing religious concepts. The series’ second volume exponentially increased both video quality and the overall narrative scope as we began to follow the lives of characters who had already grown up in this dystopian hellscape where the government is forced to prohibit religion, television, and even mirrors in the hopes of mitigating the damage done by the ongoing invasion of otherworldly entities.
The really interesting part comes into play when you realize exactly how the Alternates make use of scary media in order to spread their demonic influence, with the analog horror of it all being a diegetic part of the story and something of a memetic trap orchestrated by the false Gabriel.
I particularly appreciate how some characters begin to suspect that there’s something wrong with their version of reality and that things weren’t meant to play out this way, especially when Mark utters the haunting line “who have I been praying to all this time?” That’s why I think The Mandela Catalogue is an effective piece of religious horror even if you don’t subscribe to the Christian worldview, as the mere idea of a world where evil has already won is a universally terrifying concept in and of itself. Not only that, but the series’ uncanny analog imagery alone is already worth the price of admission, as you’ve likely already noticed by looking at the pictures accompanying this article.
Why The Feature Adaptation Could Be Horror’s Next Big Success
It’s actually been a whole year since Kister first announced that he had been working on a feature-length screenplay for a Mandela Catalogue movie since 2022, with his proposed story following an ensemble of high-school graduates who uncover a supernatural conspiracy after the mysterious disappearance of a fellow student. This premise sounds similar to narrative elements present in the series’ second volume, but I’m pretty sure that Kister is going to go the Kane Parsons route and make the movie more of a spin-off than a re-imagining of its source material.
While notable Hollywood producers like Aaron B. Koontz, Scott Stuber, and Steven Spielberg himself are backing the upcoming project, I feel like there’s no one better to adapt this deeply personal exploration of faith and the dark side of communication than the person who first came up with it. That’s why I can’t wait to see Kister’s work on the big screen, as I have a feeling that this young filmmaker is the next one on the list about to make cinematic history – especially since this is clearly a passion project that has been in the works for years at this point!
That being said, there’s always a chance that the film could end up unleashing a fresh wave of Alternate incursions, but I guess that’s just a risk we’ll have to take.
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