Children of the Corn 4K UHD Screenshots (Patreon)

Video

Arrow's new master gives Children of the Corn visual kick, keeping the color palette suitably midwestern in a Dolby Vision wrap. There's enough warmth, a soft yellow push, and energy to the primaries. Flesh tones land on point, and the whole thing looks entirely natural to a film stock. Gorgeous replication work.

Sunlight beams in and brightens things up. Children of the Corn isn't much for intensity or peak brightness, but organically controlled contrast. Black levels however look spectacular, eerily dense, solid, and thick. There's no sense crush is causing harm, blacks pure black where necessary and careful elsewhere.

This isn't an easy one for Arrow's compression algorithms. Grain spikes early, veering toward noise but controlled well enough to avoid appearing overly digital. Most of the runtime, the 35mm stock shows fine grain, handled cleanly and allowing detail to flourish. All of the Nebraskan scenery makes spectacular gains over previous Blu-ray editions, those cornfields resolved fully and precisely. Facial texture jumps where the cinematography wants it to, even in mid-range shots.

Audio

Uncompressed stereo and 5.1 tracks deliver superb fidelity. While not a grandiose score, the orchestration is given full range on both tracks, the surround remix letting it escape the stereos. Note it's a subtle enhancement, not an overly dynamic one, and thus preserves the original intent like the impressively wide stereo split.

Dialog doesn't strain or lose energy from age. Aside from a slight thinness, Children of the Corn nearly passes for modern - nearly.