On the drive from Philadelphia to their new home in Kettle Springs, a small town in a “flyover state,” 17-year-old Quinn (Katie Douglas) informs her dad Dr. Maybrook (Aaron Abrams) that she’s as far removed from the ’80s (whose hip-hop he adores) as he was, as a teen, from the ’40s.
What’s fresh is destined to become archaic, and generational tensions course throughout Clown in a Cornfield, a slasher film that’s all about hewing to convention.
Eli Craig’s adaptation of Adam Cesare’s 2020 novel of the same name both damns and celebrates that which has devolved into cliché. If its fondness for stock formulas and scares means that it’s not shocking, it also knows how to play the hits—and, of course, to deliver on its promise of killer clowns in cornfields.
Clown in a Cornfield, which hits theaters May 9, doesn’t have an original surprise in its bag of tricks, and the friction between its deliberate familiarity and its story’s condemnation of clinging to tradition is the most interesting thing about it.
Nonetheless, Craig (Tucker & Dale vs. Evil) mostly mines that conflict for humor, and at times successfully, such as during a late flight from peril that’s temporarily thwarted when two high-schoolers attempt to call for help but find that they don’t know how to use a rotary phone.
As befitting its title, seriousness is not part of its plan, and its gleeful employment of tried-and-true devices is comforting and elevated by the fact that the director is a capable genre craftsman, creating ominous atmosphere and drawing amusing archetypal characters who are then put through the gory ringer by cheery circus fiends.
The villain in question is Frendo, the smiling clown mascot of Kettle Springs’ signature corn syrup, who’s so cherished in this enclave that he’s the centerpiece float in the annual Founders Day parade. Quinn arrives in town immediately before its centennial celebration, and she promptly falls in with a group of kids—Janet (Cassandra Potenza), Ronnie (Verity Marks), Tucker (Ayo Solanke), Matt (Alexandre Martin Deakin), and Cole (Carson MacCormac)—who most local adults think of as the “wrong crowd.”
Courtesy of a jerky teacher, Quinn bonds with them in after-school detention, and she’s soon swooning for Cole, whose dad Arthur (Kevin Durand) is the region’s corn syrup oligarch and who’s presently less than thrilled with his son, who’s been accused (along with his pals) of burning down the factory and, thus, putting many out of work.
Quinn is dealing with her mom’s fatal overdose, but not really; as with many elements of Clown in a Cornfield (such as Cole’s sister’s death), this is just a tossed-off plot point intended to explain why the cast is limited.
While drinking booze, Quinn learns that her new friends enjoy making YouTube horror shorts in which Frendo is a serial killer, and it’s this pastime that most grown-ups think led to the factory blaze. Whether or not that’s true, their cinematographic hijinks do cause an inferno at the Founders Day parade, landing them in jail and confirming to Dr. Maybrook that Quinn should stay away from these troublemakers.
Quinn, however, is a rebellious stereotype, so she doesn’t abide by her dad’s grounding, sneaking out to Cole’s annual post-parade party at the same barn where—in the film’s prologue—a horny couple was brutally slain by an angry Frendo.
Wouldn’t you know it, these festivities are interrupted by a horde of identical clownish maniacs wielding crossbows, blades, pitchforks, and chainsaws. What ensues is It by way of Children of the Corn, with the gang of smiley-face masked marauders pursing Quinn, Cole, Ronnie, and Rust (Vincent Muller)—a hunting and fishing goliath who was once BFFs with Cole—doing their best to stay alive and figure out who’s behind this homicidal onslaught.
Frendo is a great name for a psycho clown and he certainly looks the part, although it’s disappointing that he’s not more distinctive. The same can be said about Clown in a Cornfield, whose slayings are staged with a gory outlandishness that’s more than a little funny, but whose action unfolds far too predictably.
Not helping matters is the fact that a few moments—the first involving one of the jack-in the-boxes that Frendo places near victims immediately before he takes their life—are a bit sloppy. More invention would have been a plus, and yet the material moves at a speedy pace that’s only bogged down in the early going by a surplus of unimportant exposition.
Sprinkled throughout Clown in a Cornfield are references by adults to the old ways of doing things, be it Arthur praising the time-honored “things that bring us together” or Dr. Maybrook wanting to teach Quinn how to drive stick, and those are juxtaposed with Quinn’s veganism and eagerness for WI-FI and her buddies’ amateur moviemaking.
Craig is obviously on the side of his younger characters but he has plenty of affection for throwback slasher maneuvers. Fortunately, he executes them effectively, with the Frendos dispatching their targets with forceful brutality and taking an equal bit of punishment in the process, such that one clown has to transport his injured comrade to Dr. Maybrook for medical care—thereby including the doting father in the mayhem so he can play a part in the grand finale.
Everyone talks way too much during that climax, and there’s something lazy and deflating about the means by which Craig and Blanchard leave room open for a potential sequel. Still, it’s difficult to get too nitpicky about an affair such as this, whose sole purpose is to rehash in a slightly different register.
Clown in a Cornfield is a horror movie for kids who haven’t yet memorized the genre’s hallowed playbook and for adults who don’t care about seeing the same thing for the umpteenth time.
In that regard, it bridges the divide between different eras, bringing everyone together to share in a communal cinematic experience—seeing frisky, annoying, and earnest teens get picked off one-by-one by an outlandish lunatic—that’s been goings strong for decades and, as evidenced by our current glut of big-screen nightmares, shows no signs of slowing down.
