Even though no one seems to be making as big a deal of it as they might have back in the 80s or the 90s, the slasher flick seems to stealthily be in the rudest health it’s been for decades that’s to the efforts of the highly varied likes of X, Bodies Bodies Bodies and the Terrifier trilogy. However, while the titles just mentioned all have a sense of innovation about them that challenged the boundaries of what a slasher could be, Eli Craig’s Clown In A Cornfield takes a far more familiar route.
Based on the YA novel series by Adam Cesare, this latest entry into the pantheon of masked killers instead mostly sticks to the established formula like corn syrup as it parades a cast young faces around before unleashing the gurning form of Frendo The Clown upon them with appropriately splattery results. But when you realise that Clown In A Cornfield has been directed by the man who helmed the cult treasure, Tucker And Dale Vs. Evil, surely this movie has to come up with some new ideas, right?
Like virtually ever other town in the history of slasherdom, Kettle Springs has a rather checkered past. Put on the map thanks to the success of Baypen Corn Syrup and it’s mascot, Frendo The Clown, a rash of deadly incidents have left the place feeling a little weird. That weirdness stands out like a sore thumb to new girl in town, Quinn Maybrook, who has arrived with her father, Glenn, to restart their lives after the death of her mother, abd she’s barely been town for a day before she’s told to stay away from the troublesome element. The troublesome element proves to be a group of highschoolers led by the charismatic Cole who spend their time making YouTube videos mocking Frendo by casting the Clown as a deranged killer. However, the group are also seen as trouble makers from the adult population as its believed that it was their tomfoolery that caused the Baypen factory to burn to the group and cost a lot of people their jobs.
Apparently you can’t tell kids anything these days and Quinn soon joins Cole, Janet, Matt, Ronnie and Tucker as they hang out, drink and make more of their parody videos. However, when a weird prank causes major disruption to the 100th Founders Day town festival, it seems that one of the residents of Kettle Springs has had enough and soon, members of the gang start having fatal run-ins with a masked killer dressed like Frendo the Clown. Meanwhile, Quinn’s relationship with her father becomes strained as her new frirndships keep landing her in trouble. But as the group remain oblivious to their dwindling numbers, the survivors sneak out to attend a farmhouse party with more people their age, but as the tunes play and the booze flows, the youth of Kettle Springs are about to learn a deadly lesson: it’s not wise to fuck with frendo.
How much you enjoy Clown In A Cornfield will probably come down to how much you respond to it’s rather (initially basic) set up. In fact, the movie sticks to the established rules to the slasher so dutifully, if it wasn’t for some chat about WiFi and some modern turns of phrase, some could possibly be duped into thinking that it was released back in the nineties nestled neatly in-between I Know What You Did Last Summer and Halloween: H20. Other might furrow their brows at how much it bears more than a passing resemblance to the small town carnage of Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving, or even how it shares the odd plot point from Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz; but before it sounds like I’m pointing a finger at the efforts of Frendo, there is a major plus point that might offer the movie some longevity.
Yes, more hardened slash-heads may turn their nose up at how derivative the first half of the film is, but at times, it genuinely feels like Craig intends this flick to act as kind of a “my first slasher” for newbies. Not only are the teen characters facing a town full of adults terrified of change which sets up a neat gender divide that’s been occurring between generations since the first parent complained about “those bloody kids”. It’s been a subtext present in stalk and slash flicks for decades, but Craig opts to make it merely text in a way that genuinely makes you take a different view point of the usually vapid teens who populate this kind of thing.
However, even though Clown In A Cornfield takes care to honor its YA roots, that doesn’t mean that Craig isn’t above slinging round the red stuff when the need calls for it with nicely wet stabbings, decapitations and other such wounds that garantees that any newcomer still manages to get the full slasher experience. However, as Frendo goes about his bloody business, more hardened gorehounds might be confused as to why someone would dare step into killer clown country when Terrifier already exists. It’s a valid point because arguably Art the Clown had to similarly have to prove his worth in a world that held Bill Skarsgård’s Pennywise in high esteem. However, it’s with a mid-movie twist that Clown In A Cornfield finally bucks tradition and goes somewhere unexpected in a way that completely rewrites what kind of movies we thought we were watching. Obviously, I’m not going to give it away, but while some will welcome the shift, others may bemoan that it isn’t the more straightforward stab-a-thon they were sold on.
But then, that’s kind of the point. The movie is littered with generational quirks that will no doubt make old timers like me feel ancient, but there’s something oddly hilarious about a final girl being consistently thwarted because she has no idea how a rotary phone works or how to drive stick shift. The cast rise to the occasion with Katie Douglas giving good heroine and Kevin Durand chewing the scenery as the local mayor who looks distractingly like Elon Musk, however, even though the twist is pretty cool, the movie seems to not want to bother explaining it particularly well and in the chaos, details inevitably start to get sketchy. In fact, I’m not even sure if a certain character even gets their just deserts – but then that could be intentional considering that the original source material has spun out into Scream-esque sequels.
Bright, perky and more than willing to bloody up its body count, Clown In A Cornfield is a solid entry into an overcrowded subgenre, however, after a impressive twist changes the game, the film itself seems to get a little fuzzy on its own rules. Newbies will find much to enjoy, but the more grizzled or jaded horror fans may end up siding with the gloomy adults instead as they’ve seen most of this kind of thing before – still, when it comes to on the nose titles, Clown In A Cornfield certainly does what it says on the tin. And remember, a stranger is a Frendo you haven’t met yet.
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