Clown in a Cornfield opens in theaters May 9.
Some titles let you know exactly what you’re in for, and if Clown in a Cornfield isn’t a memoir by a Midwestern comedian, then it can only be a slasher. Adapted from Adam Cesare’s acclaimed 2020 novel, it’s full of rowdy teens who drink and then die at the hands of, yes, a red-nosed madman in a maize crop. The source material may be shelved in the YA section, but it and its R-rated adaptation pull few punches in terms of death and violence, operating best in the no-nonsense throwback mode that fits the simple, descriptive title. But past the halfway point, Clown in a Cornfield grasps for greater thematic weight, and there it withers, a promising crop that never quite grows to maturity.
Our soon-to-be-final girl is high school senior Quinn Maybrook (Katie Douglas). Originally from Philadelphia, she’s wrestling not just with her mom’s death but with her dad’s (Aaron Abrams) impulsive means of coping by moving them to Kettle Springs, Missouri, where he’s taken a job as the town doctor. That there can be such a thing as a “town doctor” tells you everything you need to know about the size of Kettle Springs. It’s one of those places where everybody knows everybody else, and everybody knows the local teens that Quinn falls in with are trouble. They’re the worst sort of delinquents: YouTubers.
Led by dreamy rich kid Cole Hill (Carson MacCormac), the teens have refashioned local institution Frendo the clown into the grinning star of their DIY horror shorts. The mascot of Kettle Springs’ now-shuttered main source of industry, the Baypen Corn Syrup Factory, Frendo’s face is plastered all over town – a ubiquity that leaves us guessing whether the clown is a supernatural entity or a masked assailant once the murders in the kids’ videos start occurring IRL. Director and co-writer Eli Craig is known for horror comedies like hicksploitation send-up Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, and he clearly has fun conceiving prankish fake-out scares for Cole and company. But aside from a few winks like an ill-fated teen encountering a clown-sized shoeprint, Craig starts out by playing the slasher notes with a reasonably straight face and a smooth competence. There’s no joke to the camera following a victim from one room to the next, toying with our expectations of when (or if) Frendo will strike. Coupled with a strong, likable lead in Quinn, the unvarnished slasher Clown in a Cornfield appears to be during its early stretches is almost comforting.
Unfortunately, there’s a twist lurking on the horizon, and it complicates that unfussy appeal. Without giving too much away, conflict between the kids and adults in Kettle Springs has already reached its boiling point. Quinn clocks it pretty early on – too early, given that she’s only encountered a few of the town’s authority figures. Beyond telegraphing the big reveal, the adaptation also dilutes the political backdrop of Cesare’s source material, muddying the source of generational strife into vague buzzwords and laugh lines.
And that’s the other problem with the latter half of Clown in a Cornfield: The tone gets goofier as it goes along. The circumstances become much more grave, and in the absence of teens kidding around and shooting videos on their phones, Craig’s comic instincts have no outlet except to leak into the action. Multiple deaths are wholly undercut by jokey dialogue, and teens scream in despair when they can’t figure out how to use a rotary phone. A few of these scenes certainly are funny, but they keep puncturing the tension while the plot builds toward mealy-mouthed commentary that’s even harder to take seriously.
But even with the film’s throwback charms, there’s a lingering sense that our pal Frendo has missed his cultural moment, with little to distinguish himself from a long cinematic tradition of masked murderers and/or killer clowns. Apart from one late-film use of a cattle prod, the all-important slasher movie kills here are short on invention, bloody but never visceral or even creative – one is as simple as Frendo firing a crossbow. Clown in a Cornfield can’t help but come off as a bit tame and unremarkable by comparison to the over-the-top clown cruelty of the Terrifier movies or the town-mascot-driven carnage of Thanksgiving. It’s the sort of thing you might half-watch in the background of a Halloween party and never be inspired to ask what the title is – though it’d be pretty easy to guess it.
