InRO Weekly — Volume 1, Issue 9

FILM REVIEWS
The digital photography looks lovely, belying the modest budget
— lustrous light splashing over flaxen fields that sway prettily in
the wind, vast grids of golden grain reticulated in orderly files
under the blue sprawl of sky. The camera moves rambunctiously,
and Wimmer oscillates between intrusive close-ups and
slow-motion shots of children traipsing in eerie unison or
marching minaciously through night-darkened streets, armed
with axes and picks and hoes and pitchforks. Some fun images:
the lead little girl, garbed in a gas mask as gray whorls of smoke
writhe all around her and a collection of captured adults beg for
mercy; and the pint-sized psychos sitting behind the wheels of a
pack of big yellow bulldozers, like slumbering beasts, that growl
to life and slowly close in on their prey who are cowering in a
ditch, waves of dirt washing over them. There's also an insert
shot of the camera whirling with an almost Bay-esque bombast
around a water tower as the sun breathes brightly behind the
time-tarnished structure, a familiar image that succinctly says:
"Rural America." Why include this shot? Because it's fun. Is it a
well-placed, meaningful moment? Not really. But it’s obvious that
Wimmer is trying to keep things lively.
The problem, then, is that there's no innocence to corrupt here —
our main villain is menacing from the beginning, and we don't
ever see how she influenced a whole town of rural children to
rise up and slaughter the adults. The diabolical deity they serve,
He Who Walks Behind the Rows in King's story and the original
film, makes no notable impression (not that it did in any previous
iteration), its presence depicted as poorly-animated tendrils
wriggling in the rows. Wimmer's film isn't particularly memorable,
and the Children of the Corn series has yet to summon a single
indelible moment in 40 years, but you have to appreciate a horror
film that aspires to entertain, and often succeeds. Good job, Kurt,
and welcome back.
The problem, then, is that there's no innocence to corrupt here —
our main villain is menacing from the beginning, and we don't
ever see how she influenced a whole town of rural children to
rise up and slaughter the adults. The diabolical deity they serve,
He Who Walks Behind the Rows in King's story and the original
film, makes no notable impression (not that it did in any previous
iteration), its presence depicted as poorly-animated tendrils
wriggling in the rows. Wimmer's film isn't particularly memorable,
and the Children of the Corn series has yet to summon a single
indelible moment in 40 years, but you have to appreciate a
horror film that aspires to entertain, and often succeeds. Good
job, Kurt, and welcome back. — GREG CWIK
DIRECTOR: Kurt Wimmer; CAST: Elena Kampouris, Kate Moyer,
Callan Mulvey; DISTRIBUTOR: RLJE Films; IN THEATERS: March
3; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 32 min.
LINOLEUM
Colin West
These days it feels like we’re more frequently encountering
stories of people — particularly men — obsessed with legacy.
Characters yearn for a sense of permanence while us viewers,
overwhelmed by the high-speed, haphazard contentification of
everything, silently wish for something more solid in our lives
too. One temporarily pacifying pleasure is to reminisce, letting
memory launch us back to our recollection of earlier, simpler
days when so much seemed to be ahead of us and the world
wasn’t so complicated. Colin West’s new feature Linoleum is made
in this spirit. It jettisons the ruminative self-seriousness a more
prestige-inflected drama might opt for, instead preferring a
snug, pleasantly offbeat vibe that’s equally nostalgic and
sanguine.
Cameron Edwin (Jim Gaffigan) is the host of a shoestring-budget
children’s science show on local TV (think a failing, super-retro
Bill Nye the Science Guy). His milquetoast life gets upended when
a space-race-era satellite crash lands in his backyard, inspiring
Cameron to MacGyver a rocket ship in his garage in a bid to fulfill
his long-held dream of becoming an astronaut. His wife Erin
(Rhea Seehorn) and daughter Nora (Katelyn Nacon) already think
he’s losing it a bit, and as their family faces mounting turmoil,
strange disruptions to his life begin to convince him that there’s
more to his reality than he thought.
You’d be forgiven if the first thing that comes to mind when
watching Linoleum is “Kaufman-lite.” Much of the film’s style and
themes are derivative of Charlie Kaufman’s work — the neurotic
handwringing about mortality, the surrealist touches bending the
story world’s contours, the doses of metaphysics providing the
springboard into questions of the meaning of life. There’s even an
implied minor thread around gender identity concerning Marc
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