The representational of the geographical region of the Midwest (as embodied in the town gatlin, Nebraska)and the great plains throughout the movie children of corn exemplifies a unique perspective of the environment, particularly through its use of the element of the corn fields throughout the film. This perspective is relatively simple and seems to make an argument for the sake of the horror element of the film, that to live in the middle of corn fields- people must be crazy.
In Children of the Corn, all of the children in the small town of Gatlin have risen up and killed the adults through the instruction of Issac and Malachi, two of the children who claim to follow the religion of "he who walks behind the corn" presumably some kind of monster linked physically to the corn fields. There is a kind of duel narrative focused on one of the children living within the community and two strangers who get lost in Gatlin. The emphasis that is placed on the corn and the landscape as being in general creepy and living in the cornfields as unnatural is shown through the narration of the outlander couple, who place the blame of the success of the supernatural phenomenon on extremist religion propaganda making the children easy targets for brainwashing as well as the dizzying isolation of the town within the cornfields.
While specific to the Midwest region, this reflects an extreme version view held by the outside American society of agrarian and rural society throughout the Great Plains.The only people we see from the Midwest region as represented by the film are children, and the brief appearances of adults or references to adults imply that they are backward and strange as well. We see this in the confused state of mind the mechanic with his dog seems to live in, and then later when the couple are in the cellar with young Sarah and her brother informs them that their father kept the place prepared for "when the communist's launch the first strike," which Bert then promptly makes fun of in the same manner he and Viki mimic the preacher on the radio in the car earlier. Through these adaptations of ideas about Midwest culture it would appear that not only does corn drive you crazy, but it makes you relatively simple-minded and easily fooled too. The Midwest children need the guidance of the couple from outside the region in order to have any agency in their lives against Issac, the monster, and Malachi and as the only representatives of the inhabitants of the plains, specifically the central region, ideas about adults living there too are filtered through this lens of simplicity and need for outside help and guidance.
In addition to this and on a more basic level however, the film capitalizes on the dizzying imagery of the corn itself and gives a nod to the fact that living in the middle of cornfields is to an outsider and even to a certain extent an insider...kind of creepy sometimes. I happen to have grown up in the middle of three corn fields. There was a hay field too. Admittedly that much corn is pretty disorienting and its easy as hell to get lost in it if you go wandering around, kind of like the idea of an organic labyrinth. Though if you ran through it as much as the characters in the film did the leaves on the stalks would slice up your arms and face pretty good, a detail the filmmakers could have paid more attention to. All in All though. As far as hokey horror movies based on Stephan King novels go... I'm pretty ok with it.
