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Clown In A Cornfield Review
Image Credit: RLJE Films & Shudder
Loading...Self-aware slashers that cash in on nostalgia for the sub-genre are something of a-dime-a-dozen these days. We are still in an era of 80’s and 90’s nostalgia, and people love to both be reminded of what they used to adore while also seeing a humorous and modern take on it. In recent years, we have seen movies such as Totally Killer, Freaky, and The Blackening come out and pay their respects to the slasher flicks of old.
The newest such outing is Clown In A Cornfield, a book-to-movie adaptation that features a killer in a clown costume who stalks teenagers in a Midwestern town with a corn-based economy. The protagonist is Quinn, a high school aged girl who has moved to Kettle Springs when her dad gets a job as the town physician. Kettle Springs is home to Baypen Corn Syrup, though the factory itself was mysteriously burned down recently, and the town elders blame their teenagers for the incident.
Quinn befriends the pariah kids and gets caught up in their partying and fun lifestyle, but it’s not long before a killer in a clown get-up starts offing them. Will Quinn and the other kids be able to figure out who is taking them out before it’s too late?
TWO UPS AND TWO DOWNS
+ A lot of modern horror, especially independent horror, often forgets to be fun and is, instead, too self-indulgent and dire in its attempt to be taken seriously as cinema. No such problem here, as Clown In A Cornfield is a joy to watch that never forgets it is there to entertain. It has moments of humor and others of great gore, and it knows exactly what it is.
There are some truly laugh out loud scenes of dialogue and action in Clown In A Cornfield. And the theater in which I watched it had an absolute blast with this one. There was full-on laughing and clapping and cheering across the runtime of this outing. That’s what you need more of these days! There is certainly a place for serious horror that wants to scare the audience and make them think about mental health or whatever, but for my money? You can’t beat a pure extravaganza experience sometimes.
+ The story takes some neat twists and turns, especially as it shifts from “aren’t young people terrible these days with their phones and their TikToks?” to a more nuanced story of generations needing to reach out to one another. It’s a surprisingly well told tale. I was surprised to find out this was based on a novel, and from what I understand they even took out some of the deeper elements for the theatrical retelling.
In the first act or so, I thought this was another movie–one of many these days, it seems–that was determined to make light of Generation Z. And it does! But in the back end, the young characters show more depth and talk about the sins of the older generation. It’s nice to see the movie flip the switch and go in against its characters from multiple gens before it’s all said and done.
– I kind of miss when Slasher killers could just be unstoppable monsters and we didn’t need killer reveals. That would change this movie’s whole shtick, sure, but… I still miss it sometimes. It’s probably why Terrifier is so popular; I am not alone. Others clearly want this, as well. But those characters used to be the standard, not the exception. We had Jason and Michael and Chucky and Freddy… it was great! Nowadays it feels like whenever we get a slasher movie, it’s all about the reveal at the end. The killer always ends up being just a human, which kind of negates some of what they feel capable of.
I’m not going to spoil Clown In A Cornfield any further than that, but it does a good enough job keeping Frendo imposing and dangerous despite his humanity. But I still wish he had ended up being a different kind of threat. Oh well. I guess we will stick to Art The Clown instead of Frendo The Clown when it comes to that.
– The movie at times plays with tropes, and at other times leans into them. It’s a bit of a whiplash in tone that way. It’s trying to have cake and eat it too. It wants to BE a classic slasher, but it also wants to make fun of the way things go in those kinds of flicks.
There is one moment in particular that stuck with me where a character realized they were facing a slasher villain and said “that means I’ll be the next to die!”. And then, a few minutes later, they are. I kind of thought that was a solid time for Clown In A Cornfield to go against type, but… it mocks a trope, then actually follows through on the very same cliche. Weird choice.
