One would be forgiven for assuming there was a lot more to early summer slasher Clown in a Cornfield other than, well, a clown in a cornfield. Because ever since an inevitable premiere atSXSWin March, an impressively maintained buzz has followed – special drive-in screenings, an ambitiously wide release, the bullish positioning of a New Horror Icon – giving us enough naive hope that in an overcrowded genre (there’s estimated to be double the amount of wide release horrors this year compared to 2024), this one might be worthy of the hype.
But the film, which was picked up by ever-growing horror streamer Shudder at the end of last year, would have been a wiser choice for a small screen premiere, a late-night weekend couch watch that feels a little too modest for the multiplex. The expansive rollout will likely have been triggered by the surprise success of last year’s Art the Clown sequelTerrifier 3, which made a staggering $90m worldwide from a $2m budget (it was released the month before Clown in a Cornfield was purchased). As small and junky as those films might be, they’re distinguished by a throughline of ghoulishly inventive ultra-gore, a throwback to the kind of video nasty violence that would worry and repulse parents, the act of seeing the films then carrying with it an air of juvenile rebellion.
There’s nothing here to warrant such concern, no real sense of danger to be conjured, Clown in a Cornfield content to be a perfectly watchable, if mostly mechanical, production line slasher. “It’s like we’re in some awful 80s slasher horror movie!” one of the anonymous sub-Scream characters says at one point. Yes whatever your name is, it really is!
It’s based on Adam Cesare’s YA novel from 2020, centered on a classic subgenre archetype – the smart dark-haired girl with a dead mum – as she moves to a new town with father (Hannibal’s Aaron Abrams). Quinn (Katie Douglas, giving young Cristin Milioti energy) is, of course, loathed to relocate from the big city of Philadelphia to the small town of Kettle Springs, a rural dead zone haunted by the reminder of what it once was, when its corn syrup factory brought employment and business to the townsfolk. But she soon finds herself a tribe – a group of rule-breaking YouTubing high schoolers – and a slowly evolving love triangle between a gruff kid from the wrong side of the tracks and the well-to-do son of the mayor.
There is, however, aclown in a cornfield, ready to ruin her fun.
The clown is named Frendo, a bastardisation of the town’s one-time mascot, this time far less friendly and far more carrying a chainsaw. It’s a character the teens have been using in their prank videos, faking attacks that have made them a target of the fatigued sheriff. But now, Frendo is real and he’s picking them off one by one, in and out of the cornfield.
There aresomeappreciated tweaks to the formula here, attempts to update what could have easily just been an “80s slasher horror movie” but with smartphones. But they mostly come within a busy last act, a little too late, given how run-of-the-mill the majority of the film before that can be. The script, from Carter Blanchard and director Eli Craig, might have its roots in YA but the characters are as weakly etched and indistinguishable as they would be in any other old sleepover slasher. It’s only really in that final act when the we can see the source material, in a neat and genuinely surprising queer twist far more interesting and subversive than anything related to the cut-and-paste lead.
The big reveal, while illogically daft, does have a certain on-paper thematic novelty to it but it’s cursedly both over-explained and hard-to-really-understand, a “why are you doing this?” response that rambles into nonsense. Perhaps the majority of Friday night teens aren’t going to Clown in a Cornfield for plot specifics but even as a more base slasher, it just doesn’t have enough to make it remarkable. Frendo is just some clown, never given all that much to separate him from the many other horror clowns we know better, and while the deaths are certainly grisly, they’re interchangeable.
There’s definitely a clown in that cornfield but there’s precious little else.
Clown in a Cornfield is out in US and UK cinemas on 9 May