After the release of Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice (1992) and the series' acquisition by Dimension Films, the subsequent installments were released directly to video, and bore little to no narrative continuity, beginning with Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest (1995).

Beginning with the third installment, Dimension elected to produce standalone films that were not necessarily narratively connected.

The fourth film returns to a rural Nebraska town where a young medical student attempts to uncover a mysterious illness striking the children of her hometown; the fifth film follows a group of young people who encounter the children, led by a man, Ezekiel, of He Who Walks Behind the Rows, when staying overnight in an abandoned farmhouse.

Part six follows a woman, born of the cult from the first film, who returns to Gatlin to uncover the identity of her birth mother, while the seventh installment focuses on a woman who travels to a small town outside Omaha to investigate the disappearance of her grandmother; there, she encounters bizarre children in the fields surrounding her grandmother's apartment building.

The ninth film, Genesis, follows a couple who lodge with a mysterious preacher in the California desert, who appears to be leading a bizarre cult.