Clown in a Cornfield Lives Up to That Tremendous Title

Clown in a Cornfield is such a succinct yet evocative title for a horror movie. Your villain and your setting are right there, plus all the awful connotations your imagination can whip up regarding both. Eli Craig’s new slasher has a lot to live up to with a title like that, but the director of Tucker & Dale vs. Evil knows what he’s doing.

He’s got all the ingredients: appealing characters, a small town with a huge secret, a ghoulish killer, and an underlying message that makes sure the film is about more than just a killer clown splattering victims around a cornfield—though rest assured, there’s still plenty of that.

After a preface set in 1991 that immediately delivers—kids partying in a cornfield are ambushed by a maniac with very large shoes—we cut to the present day and get a closer look at Kettle Springs, Missouri, a farm town that’s fallen on hard times since the Baypen Brand Corn Syrup factory closed. The company’s mascot, a grinning clown named “Frendo,” still looms over the town as a reminder of more prosperous days. More recently, desperately bored local teens have cast him as the masked killer in horror shorts they put out on YouTube.

The sleepy rural community soon adds two new residents: Quinn (Ginny & Georgia‘s Katie Douglas) and her father (Aaron Abrams). He’s accepted the job of town doctor, figuring that after the sudden loss of Quinn’s mother, the pair could use a fresh start. Though she quickly befriends the YouTube clique, Quinn’s not thrilled about relocating to Nowheresville, especially as she picks up on how hostile the older residents are toward the local teenagers.

But there’s not much time to marinate on that as things get going; Clown in a Cornfield takes place over just a few days and nights, and a good amount of screen time is given over to red-nosed, red-wigged terror, wielding chainsaws, crossbows, cattle prods, and other conveniently available implements of destruction.

Despite that title, and despite Craig being the guy behind the cult-beloved Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, Clown in a Cornfield is actually less of a comedy than you might think. There are witty, self-referential lines—the script is by Craig and Carter Blanchard, adapted from the novel by Adam Cesare—but Frendo is not to be fucked with, as one character cautions Quinn. Whoever’s under the mask is ruthless and furious, and Clown in a Cornfield engages in some sly misdirection about the killer’s ID as more and more bodies pile up.

Throughout the film, Clown in a Cornfield pulls on the threads of that generation-gap conflict and even brings technology in as part of it. Quinn’s new friends love making videos and being online, but they’re surrounded by adults who don’t see the point of even the most basic progress. (One of the funniest scenes, teased in the film’s trailer, is a crisis that occurs when the only way to call for help involves a rotary phone.)

The motivation behind Frendo’s slaughter ties into this divide, and if the pieces don’t quite completely fit together at the end, Clown in a Cornfield has by then built up a lot of energetic goodwill. It ultimately proves itself to be a mostly straightforward slasher film—complete with many of the expected tropes, including pleasingly gruesome gore—with some clever and subversive jabs along the way.

Clown in a Cornfield also stars Kevin Durand, Will Sasso, Carson MacCormac, Vincent Muller, Cassandra Potenzo, and Verity Marks. It hits theaters May 9.

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