CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD (2025)

New in theaters this week!
Directed by Eli Craig.
Written by Carter Blanchard, Eli Craig, adapted from a book by Adam Cesare.
Check out the trailer here!!

Quinn (Katie Douglas) and her father (Aaron Abrams) move to a small town in middle America called Kettle Springs. The town has seen better days as the Baypen Corn Syrup Factory has recently shut down, causing many to lose their jobs and leave the area. This includes the town doctor which is a role Quinn’s father has chosen to fill, much to Quinn’s disdain for moving away from her life and friends from the coast. Almost immediately, Quinn takes up with a group of kids who have gained online popularity by posting YouTube videos, casting the town mascot, Frendo the Clown, as a serial killer. But soon enough, Quinn and her new friends find that the murderous Frendo is all too real and after them with all sorts of weapons of terror.

While not even near as ghastly or grotesque as the TERRIFIER series, CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD is a potent little slasher that hits all the right marks with a variety of kills, an assortment of weapons, annoying kids set up for slaughter, and a very scary clown. CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD is heavily influenced by SCREAM and mainstream self-aware horror like it as the kids comment that the experience is like being in a horror movie and the like. While I do find this type of meta-horror grating, thankfully, CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD only does this in small doses. There are other moments where kids scream and do things that no sane person would do, solely for the sake of a laugh or simply for something to fill a space with a throwaway line like “RUN!” or “FUCK.” I am of the school that believes less dialog is more. I had these screaming teens been a little less verbal about everything with their smartassery, they would have been scores more likable and I would have been much more invested in the film itself.

That said, I don’t want to be a total old grump. CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD is a fun romp in the rows of corn with a very scary clown. It does a decent job of setting up the through-running theme of old versus young, with everyone in the town over eighteen being complete assholes to the kids. In fact, there really are no twenty-sometings in this town. Just middle-aged people and teens, which is kind of weird. Still, the generational divide is something that is heavily addressed in the plot. Quinn is at the age where she is a rebellious teen. Her father is trying to be the cool dad, but finding himself worrying about his daughter, especially since she seems to be getting into trouble with her new friends. The same kind of divide is addressed in the motivations of the killer, but I won’t really get into that here. Maybe a spoiler laden post sometime next week.

This was one of the few times that I had read the book prior to watching the movie. I know books allow for more depth into the subject matter. But I feel that a lot of the dire state of the small town in Adam Cesare’s book is glossed over in in movie in preference to having key players in the plot reminisce about better days. If looked at through a political lens, and it’s a lens I hate doing these days because it causes such ridiculous debate. Nevertheless, one might say this is a story about forward thinkers versus people who are just comfortable to leave things as they are. I’ll leave it at that. The allegory is there in the plot, but not so much as to beat you over the head with it. I feel the book did a better job of showing how desperate times call for desperate measures like making yourself up like a clown and killing a bunch of snot-nosed kids.

Thankfully, the real focus is on the clown carnage and there is a whole hell of a lot of it. The clown uses all types of weaponry, from crossbows to chainsaws to axes to pitchforks. It made me long for the days when Jason would raid the toolshed and vary up his kills from one kid to the next with different cutlery. The Clown looks pretty creepy too with beady eyes, a thick brow, and a smile pulled back so far it looks like a grimace. Those with Coulrophobia—the fear of clowns, are given a lot of pants filling moments as the cornrows are endless and everywhere and at any time a clown could pop out of nowhere. While I could call the frights before they happened, I still found myself jumping a time or two at the way director Eli Craig (who also directed TUCKER & DALE VERSUS EVIL) set up the scene.

The comedy is hit or miss. While the kids are sometimes quite annoying in the way they interact with one another, I can’t say they aren’t acting genuinely like kids. There are scenes where a line is given that plops like a turd. “When your dad tries to teach you to drive stick-shift, you need to listen to him!” is one of them. Or maybe it is that the lead actress, surely hired for her similarity to Jenna Ortega, just wasn’t able to seel it. Sure it’s a thought someone might have, but you just don’t say it out loud in a situation where a killer clown is after you. Then again, the scene highlighted in the trailer where the girls try to call the cops, but don’t know how to dial on a rotary phone did make me laugh. It highlights that while the kids do a good job of making fun of the adults here, the kids are just as dense as them at times. I think had the script balanced that divide a little more evenly, it would have been stronger.

Don’t expect vivisections or sloshing in a foot of blood in CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD. This is not that type of film and thankfully, this one doesn’t try to be another TERRIFIER. It’s much more like CHILDREN OF THE CORN meets an 80’s slasher with a lot of fun cat and mouse and of course, a couple of twists and turns to make it all feel a little more dangerous.

CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD is impressive mainstream slasher horror. It’s not the smartest or most original, but it does have enough flashy kills and unexpected turns to make it worth checking out.

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Music & Arrangement by Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy https://youtu.be/PDySbxQgZMg
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