Clowns. They’re a divisive bunch. Whether you shriek with delight at the sight of the balloon-animal artistes or scream in fear when they start piling out of their impossibly small car, there is no doubt that these painted-face performers make for an excellent horror movie villain. In fact, filmmaker Eli Craig is counting on it.

Filmed in Manitoba with an all-Canadian cast, Clown in a Cornfield delivers exactly what it promises and so much more. The teens of a fading midwestern town don’t have much respect for Frendo, the clown mascot from a bygone era of the town’s defunct corn syrup factory. To stave off boredom, the high schoolers, which now includes new girl Quinn (Katie Douglas), make trending horror video pranks in which Frendo tortures and kills people. Their artistic fantasies become reality when Frendo show up to wreak bloody havoc on the town.

A surefire delight from the Tucker and Dale vs. Evil director, That Shelf’s Rachel West spoke with Craig about his latest film.

Rachel West (RW): I have to ask, on a scale from 1 to running away screaming when you see a clown, how do you feel about clowns?

Eli Craig (EC): I’ve been desensitized a bit now. I think I was pretty scared of clowns, and that’s part of what attracted me to this project. The very first time I saw Frendo, we spent some time designing him and creating this mask. The first time I saw him, I jumped, I screamed, I was, ah! And jumped back, and I think it was then I realized, I’m terrified of my own movie. But I’ve been desensitized because I not only shot the whole movie, then I edited it. And by now, I hug Frendo every time I see him.

RW: I know this is based on the book by Adam Cesare, but what drew you to Clown in a Cornfield?

EC: I first read it as a really fun and action-packed script. When I got to the book, I realized how many layers to the onion there were. Adam had created a very light and compelling book that was much deeper than it seemed at first glance. And those are the kind of movies I like to make. I really want people to be able to watch the movie multiple times and maybe get new things from it each time. And then there were some twists and turns to the genre and some sort of upending of genre expectations that sealed the deal for me. And I was like, OK, I have to do this movie.

RW:  I think one of the things that may surprise people going in is actually how funny this movie is. We often hear filmmakers say that comedy is actually the hardest thing to get right. How did you find that mix of horror and comedy? Was it difficult for you to nail with this cast?

EC: Well, it’s so funny because most of my movies are comedies. And this was the one time I felt free to not be funny all the time; I didn’t need to close every scene with a button. I wasn’t looking for jokes all the way through it but I was trying to bring a sense of levity to it. And definitely, when there were very suspenseful moments, I wanted to give people an outlet for humour and I wanted to play with expectations a lot. It’s very fun when the audience has a different expectation than what happens, and that’s funny. But it’s also funny when the characters inside the movie have a different expectation for what’s happening, and they’re just wrong. That’s sort of my Three’s Company sort of sense of humor.

You know, Tucker and Dale vs. Evil does that a lot where the characters in the movie just don’t get what’s happening. That’s just always funny to me. I guess I can’t resist playing with humour in my films because I find humour is what gets me through life. Humour is what makes it feel like it’s worth living. I don’t know if I didn’t have a wife that made me laugh seven times a day, every day how I would function. I just feel like sometimes the world right now, especially, it’s just too serious. Let’s just laugh at some of the absurdity. So there’s nothing more absurd than a clown chasing kids through a cornfield. But somehow it just seems relevant as well.

RW:  I was quite happy to see this really strong Canadian cast in the film, and of course, filming in Manitoba. What can you tell me about the casting process?

EC: All Canadian cast, all Canadian crew. And it was my love of Canada. I became a Canadian citizen. I’ve lived here for eight years. My wife’s Canadian. My kids are Canadian, raising them in North Vancouver. I became a citizen in May, and I shot this film in August. So it was kind of, I felt like, let’s hire all Canadians for this. Let’s just make this all-Canadian now that this great country has let me be a part of their citizenry.

Once I saw Katie Douglas, I knew that she was my Quinn. I watched everything she did, and I just fell in love with her as an actor. I think she has such range, but also everything she says is authentic and she has a heart. She’s a very sort of small and seemingly fragile person that’s got the soul and the heart of a warrior. She has so much strength inside her. For me to give her the chance to kind of fight back against Frendo, it was a real, real pleasure.

RW: She’s a great addition to the canon of women in horror and the final girl. That’s something that the film also really touches on. You have a lot of nods to the classic slashers, but you also have a number of these fresh twists and some of that is the humour. How did you strike that balance between wanting to pay homage, but also forge your own path with this film?

EC:  I think that if you’re not putting yourself on the screen, you’re doing something wrong as a director. I don’t exactly know how I end up so much on the screen of my work. It’s very hard for me to say, but I am proud that there’s somehow a sense of playfulness here. I’m a very playful person. I’m an athlete, and I love skiing and rock climbing. I love kayaking and sports are playful. I’ve spent so much of my life kind of playing and I try to bring that to my work. I think the actors really respond because acting is play and you don’t wanna feel like you’re doing it wrong.

I think even with the tension and all that, and I am trying to scare people in this movie, that’s also kind of play, you know? We’re playing with people’s emotions, but I got your back. I’m not  going to hurt you in this movie too much. I want you to leave feeling uplifted and joyful and maybe with a sense of freedom.

RW: One of the things that is a lot of fun are some of the kills, the death scenes.  I don’t want to spoil it for people, but how much fun was it to take it to the level that we see in the film, going for some extreme and just some funny killers?

EC: That was so fun to craft. You start out storyboarding these ideas and your storyboard artist is looking at you, because I work with a storyboard artist that’s drawing it as I’m speaking it out to him.  I remember getting looks from the storyboard artist, like, you’re insane. This is crazy. And I’d be like, no, we’re going crazier. Let’s keep pushing it.

Then going into pre-production and figuring out with your stuntmen and your team how we’re going to make this happen is just such a part of the problem-solving fun of filmmaking. When you get there and do the scene and play it out, pretty much everything is in camera. There are a lot of practical effects in this. So it’s quite fun to sit and watch it play out. I would say that the actors really appreciated the practical quality of it, and they all just dove in headfirst into this project. They also loved their kills. In fact, they would be arguing over who has the best kill! No, mine’s better. No, I think mine’s better.

RW: That’s one of the things I think that the audience appreciates, too.  I want to talk a bit about  having to shoot outside in the open. It’s a cornfield. It’s Manitoba. You do have some of those interior elements, but a lot of this film and a lot of those scares are outside in a field.

EC: Yeah, in Winnipeg, in the late fall, as they’re harvesting the corn and the snow begins to fall. It’s hard, you know, it’s really hard work. Sometimes I’m upset that I think Hollywood does a disservice by dressing all these people up and making them look like prima donnas, and everybody looks like a diva when they go to award shows. But these are hardcore people and they’re in the elements at four in the morning and it’s minus 20 out and they’re bolting through cornfields and getting sliced up. It’s thrilling because it really is an adventure. You kind of bond with these people through the hardship. And that’s really part of the fun.

RW: Yeah, Manitoba, not a place known for its late fall warmth.

EC: It dumped like 20 centimetres of snow on us for the last week of shooting. And we had these amazing crewmen, the greensmen, who would blow torch off areas of my shot and dry it out so that I could just keep shooting.

RW: Were there any horror films or horror directors that have influenced you in your career on this film?

EC: It’s like John Carpenter, I was thinking a lot about his… there’s something gritty about all of his work and it’s real and grounded. I was thinking of that over the supernatural, like a lot of times Stephen King, you know, obviously not a filmmaker, but a lot of stuff is supernatural in Stephen King’s world.  I think the book advertises a little bit like it’s Stephen King and then goes John Carpenter. And so I was looking a lot to him, but I also was looking to like Jaws and Steven Spielberg’s work. I like action movies as well. So it was a combination of a lot of different styles. And then once I’ve watched a ton of films, just kind of doing my own thing.

RW: Were there any scenes that kind of completely transformed once you got into the edit stage?

EC: There’s a scene that is quite dramatic. where Quinn gives her backstory.  Katie Douglas has so much emotional depth and so much ability to bring out that inside herself. I just wanted a hint of it. If I wanted to show more, I could show there a tear shedding or whatever, but it felt like a film to just touch on what’s there and pull back. And so, you know, sometimes filmmaking is like haiku. You just give a little one word to something and it changes how the whole scene feels.

In shooting, there were elements where we changed everything at the moment almost. Like, you know what? That’s wrong. Let’s get together. We’re going to redo this scene real quick and rework it. It was so great that the cast was just all game. They would all just jump in, and that’s what makes it, I think, have that liveliness.

RW: It was a lively audience last night at the screening. What are you hoping the audience experience is like when they watch this in theatres?

EC: First and foremost, movies are like a feeling. I actually brought my youngest son, who is 11 years old, to the Vancouver premiere last night and he saw the film for the first time. He was shaking, holding my hand, holding his older brother’s hand, nd some things he had to close his eyes. But he was so involved in the film and he loved it so much. At the end of it he said, “I have this sense of freedom after seeing that. I feel so alive”.

It was the best comment I’ve had because I think I want people to come out with this sense of freedom and enjoy just being alive. I think that’s what horror can bring us in this super anxious time that we have right now. We can go to a horror film and we can come out of it going like, “Man, life is short but let’s take a big bite out of it”.

Clown in a Cornfield opens in theatres on May 9.

Interview has been edited for length and clarity.