Clown in a Cornfield, 2025.
Directed by Eli Craig.
Starring Aaron Abrams, Katie Douglas, Carson MacCormac, Cassandra Potenza, Verity Marks, Bradley Sawatzky, Vincent Muller, Ayo Solanke, Daina Leitold, Dylan McEwan, Kaitlyn Bacon, Alexandre Martin Deakin, Will Sasso, and Kevin Durand.
SYNOPSIS:
A fading midwestern town in which Frendo the clown, a symbol of bygone success, re-emerges as a terrifying scourge.
Co-writer/director Eli Craig’s horror/comedy Clown in a Cornfield (responsible for the beloved, side-splittingly hilarious Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, penning this screenplay alongside Carter Blanchard, based on the first of a series of books by Adam Cesare) is a uniquely bloody stab at sending up slasher genre tropes, but also fails to shake the sensation that the filmmaker was at a crossroads, unsure whether to be satirically funny or emotionally sincere. It’s attempting both, with each undercutting the other in the process.
It begins with a 1990s prologue depicting perhaps the oldest and most classic genre trope: two young adults running off to get high, fornicate, and meet their grim demise. However, since everything mainstream is mostly sexless in modern cinema, the titular murderous Frendo clown pops out and graphically kills them before they even get to kissing. If you introduce the trope, why not embrace it all the way? That’s a conversation for a separate piece, but it is also another window into the indecisiveness behind this entire project.
If that wasn’t enough, the clown (potentially more than one) stands in as a metaphor for something relevant to current events, which is admirable even if the bluntness is, well, corny. There is also a side story centered on sexual identity here. By the time Clown in a Cornfield is over, the tonal shifts are so jarring and unsuccessful that it probably feels like being lost in a cornfield. Simultaneously, it’s respectable that a filmmaker would even attempt combining those two elements in one narrative.
To clarify, this is not a bad film but a confused one. Sometimes it’s unclear if we should be rooting for most of these annoying teenagers to die or sweating out their survival. It doesn’t help that the friend group transplant student Quinn (Katie Douglas), involves herself with in the small town of Kettle Springs, is a mischievous bunch who meticulously fake slasher kills to scare others pointlessly and for social media clout.
When that’s the type of teenagers we are dealing with here, it doesn’t matter how uptight the surrounding adults, such as a no-nonsense sheriff played by Will Sasso, are. I’d be pissed too if these dopes came out of nowhere pulling a stunt like that. Allegedly, they also accidentally burned down a nearby factory. None of this is to say the adults don’t have their issues either. Yes, eventually, there is a real killer clown on the loose, but such a label could also refer to both the teenagers and the adults.
It also wouldn’t be a modern-day horror film if everyone weren’t still processing trauma and grieving. Katie has moved here with her father, Dr. Glenn Maybrook (Aaron Abrams), following the loss of her mom. Despite being warned by an outcast with an affinity for hunting and guns (Vincent Muller), she finds herself attracted to the bad boy, Cole (Carson MacCormac), who was also accused of playing a role in the death of his sister, not to mention the arson incident.
His father has also inherited the town’s famous syrup business, whose mascot is Frendo, the creepy clown he and his friends dress up as, making their fake kills. As such, there is the clichéd juxtaposition of a helicopter parent and a cold, more emotionally distant one. Even stranger but somewhat fitting for a horror movie, it turns out that the gun specialist (who also has trauma) is the person you want to be your friend in the impending nightmare.
Founder’s Day is also approaching for Kettle Springs, which sets the stage for blood-splattering madness when a killer clown begins picking off the teenagers one by one. Some kills are cleverly brutal (such as a weightlifting one), with the filmmaker and cinematographer Brian Pearson aware of how to stage and shoot them with a visceral ruthlessness. Pitchforks don’t just go inside bodies, but also lift them while smashing ceiling lights. There are fountains of blood and gore aplenty, with much of it coming from a place of creativity rather than trashy shock value.
The most pleasant surprise is that, while Clown in a Cornfield seems to be setting itself up as yet another dime-a-dozen Scream-style mystery, it is not that. If anything, it’s refreshingly straightforward and more concerned with one theme it wants to hammer home as loudly as possible, complete with cringeworthy speeches on the subject. This is a slasher flick trying to be modern and relevant while humorously pulling from beloved tropes, often with uneven results and without the sharp gallows comedic execution to be expected from Eli Craig.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association, Critics Choice Association, and Online Film Critics Society. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews and follow my BlueSky or Letterboxd
