The cinematic landscape is in perpetual search of the next slasher icon; a masked, machete-wielding emissary of death we can, perversely, root for. We crave someone to bring artistry to carnage, flair to the final act, and a little postmodern irony with the bloodletting. In recent years, M3GAN stood out, a synthetic girlboss with a murderous quirk and a TikTok-worthy dance routine. She captured the zeitgeist with all the subtlety of a stab wound, spawning memes, merchandise, and an inevitable franchise. Now comes Clown in a Cornfield, based on Adam Cesare’s 2020 young adult horror novel of the same name, directed by Eli Craig; who last impressed fifteen years ago with the horror-comedy gem Tucker and Dale vs Evil. That film was a clever inversion of hillbilly horror tropes, gleeful in its splatter and smarter than it needed to be. His latest offering, however, feels less like a revival than a missed opportunity; a film that desperately wants to belong to the pantheon of genre cult hits but barely registers as a curiosity.
The story follows Quinn (played with admirable commitment by Katie Douglas), a grieving teenager who relocates with her father (Aaron Abrams) to the unnervingly wholesome town of Kettle Springs. This is the kind of place where the biggest scandal involves the closing of the local corn syrup factory and the odd appearances of its inexplicably clown-themed mascot, Frendo. But alas, the quiet doesn’t last. Soon, teenagers begin dying in creatively uninspired ways; courtesy of a killer clown who, in an apparent bid for branding consistency, leaves a toy jack-in-the-box as his calling card.
The film opens in 1991, in a sequence that tries, valiantly, to evoke the golden age of slasher cinema. There’s an attempt at mood, at nostalgia, and at building the sort of mythic boogeyman slasher fans adore. But Frendo the Clown is no Freddy Krueger, and no Ghostface; his visage is more party store than nightmare fuel, and his menace fades almost instantly under the weight of his own mediocrity.
Craig’s instincts for horror-comedy, so sharp in Tucker and Dale, are largely absent here. The film takes itself seriously, though its dialogue teeters between self-aware and simply stilted. One longs for a moment of levity, a satirical edge, or even just an original kill; but instead, we’re given a series of predictable set-pieces involving chainsaws, blades, and shotguns. Gore is present, but inspiration is not.
Thematically, Clown in a Cornfield gestures toward something broader; generational divides, small-town decay, class tensions; but the script doesn’t trust the audience enough to explore these ideas with any nuance. Instead, it races from one bloody death to the next, peppered with awkward exposition and increasingly implausible motivations that fall apart under the lightest scrutiny.
There are shades of Scream, Hot Fuzz, and even Children of the Corn here, but none of those films’ ingenuity. The final act, set in a crumbling barn, aspires to catharsis but lands in cliché. By the time the inevitable setup for a sequel arrives, the only real twist is how little one cares.
To be fair, younger viewers; particularly those new to the genre; may find something to enjoy in its slick pacing and mild scares. But for horror veterans, Clown in a Cornfield offers little beyond frustration: a missed opportunity to turn a promising premise into something resonant, memorable, or at least entertaining.In the end, there is no clown car of creative kills here; just a slow, sad parade of tropes and unfulfilled potential. Frendo may squeak, but he doesn’t scream.
