It’s no secret that I love the horror genre. From classic slashers to the more modern era of “elevated horror” (not my favourite term), there’s so many interesting and unique things to experience in the genre. 

When I saw the trailer for Clown in a Cornfield at the theatre I was intrigued, but skeptical. I was a big fan of Tucker and Dale vs Evil, a horror comedy directed and co-written by Eli Craig, who is the co-writer and director for this. But the trailer lacked some of that originality or self awareness that Craig’s previous movie had and looked like a very generic horror slasher with a clown. 

The film stars Katie Douglas, Aaron Abrams, Carson MacCormac, Kevin Durand, and Will Sasso. Douglas is our lead, Quinn, who moves from Philadelphia to the small town of Kettle Springs, Missouri. The psuedo town mascot is Frendo the clown, the actual mascot for the Baypen factory that historically has been the economic lifeblood of the community before it recently burned down. 

So, is Clown in a Cornfield a-maize-ing fun, or just another corny catastrophe?

My Thoughts

Unfortunately, some of my instincts about this one were spot on. It’s not all bad though, and I’ll start with what I liked! 

The Fendo costume and the kills were solid. They were a bit more gnarly than I was expecting (complimentary) and a bit more bloody too. So much of the movie takes place in the dark though, so much of that gore is hidden away by that. 

There were also some jokes I liked throughout. There were flashes of smart humour, particularly around the Gen Z and baby boomer divide that were funny. 

The cast in this was fine, too. Nobody stood out as incredibly good or bad, but this is also where I’m going to pivot to the negatives. While I didn’t think performances were bad, the characters on the page were definitely worse. The dialogue, especially at the beginning, was super clunky and inorganic, and the characters we’re introduced to really are paper thin and cliched horror movie characters. 

Speaking of cliches, this script was absolutely FILLED with them. Now, I admittedly haven’t read the book this is based on to have an opinion on it as an adaptation, but as a movie on its own, I struggle to think of experience I’ve had that was more basic and by the numbers than this was. The narrative “twists” (and I never had used that term this loosely before) are so obvious and apparent from the outset basically that it gave me the feeling as if I had actually read the books and knew what to expect. Beyond that though, it’s all in here. We got city folk moving to the small town, we got the rowdy young kids and the grumpy boomers, we got a killer clown, we got a final girl that was forced to move here against her wishes (which of course is causing conflict with her dad), we got weird neighbors, we have sudden emotional backstories delivered via exposition, we’ve got small town parades, we’ve got a mayor (I think, anyway) delivering the big speech about small town values, we’ve got jocks, highschool bullies, and yes, parties in a barn out by the cornfield. By no means is this list comprehensive either. I’m intentionally not listing other cliches that would spoil parts of the film. 

However, this on its own isn’t a point of negativity. Lots of movies, especially in the horror genre, are formulaic. However, the biggest sin this movie commits is that it does absolutely nothing, outside basically a single throwaway line, to acknowledge this or do anything with it. Tucker and Dale vs Evil was so funny, particularly in the first two acts, because it played with those stereotypes in a unique and fun way. My only issue with that movie is that the third act becomes a very generic horror movie, and unfortunately that’s where Clown in a Cornfield starts and ends. 

As always, I want to keep details as vague as possible so as to not give things away, but the last point I needed to mention is the Gen Z vs Boomer dynamic of it all. I’m a millenial, so I’m not in either camp here, but the heavy handedness at points about this dynamic made my eyes roll out of my head. Delivering a big speech about how a generation is destroying the planet while the other has no respect for tradition at climatic moments just didn’t work for me at all and it screamed inauthentic, surface, and hollow. 

Verdict

Clown in a Cornfield has a few solid kills and the occasional laugh, but it’s buried under so many clichés it might as well be six feet deep. Unless you’re brand new to horror, you’ve seen this all before. Still, if you’re Gen Z and the premise still grabs you, it’s playing in theatres now!