Evil clowns are back, baby! After the success of Terrifier, Hollywood is gearing up for more killer clowns. Based on Adam Cesare’s popular YA series (three books published and just waiting for sequels), Clown in a Cornfield hit a sweet spot with readers looking for throwback horror similar to R.L. Stine’s Fear Street books and Christopher Pike’s novels. In this case, a new kid moves to a small town where something doesn’t feel right. Terror ensues. Director Eli Craig doesn’t fiddle with too many details short of tweaking the opening prologue.
Set back in the 1990s (it hurts to write that), the first scene jumpstarts the scares early. Craig has a lot of fun with the opening, including several loving homages to Jaws while setting the tone for the kind of action to expect from the film. A lot of gore while retaining the sense of fun that made Tucker & Dale vs Evil a cult classic.
Quinn Maybrook (Katie Douglas) is despondent. She looks out the window of her father’s car, staring into the vacant expressions of locals in Kettle Springs. Dr. Maybrook (Aaron Abrams) relocated the family so that he could take over as the town doctor, but Quinn has nothing to look forward to except graduating. Kettle Springs is a long way from the streets of Philadelphia. You have to drive twenty miles just to go to the mall. The only thing of note in Kettle Springs was the Baypen Corn Syrup Factory, but it burned down, leaving residents without jobs and at each other’s throats.
Quinn and Dr. Maybrook stick out immediately in the small town. While they don’t always see eye-to-eye, they genuinely care for each other. Mayor Hill (Kevin Durand) and his son Cole (Carson MacCormac) can barely stay in the same room. And it’s not just the Hills. You can tell from the shifty gaze of every adult that the youth aren’t welcome in Kettle Springs. Rust (Vincent Muller) tries to show Quinn the ropes, but his large stature and redneck background are red flags. School isn’t better. Quinn’s first day starts with a tardy and ends with getting banned from the Founder’s Day celebration. Mr. Vern (Bradley Sawatzky), already wound too tight, lumps Quinn in with the popular clique that humiliated him with a morning prank. There’s Baypen Corn Syrup nepobaby, Cole; It girls Janet (Cassandra Potenza) and Ronnie (Verity Marks); jock Matt (Alexandre Martin Deakin); and prankster Tucker (Ayo Solanke).
Where Quinn’s initiation into the cool crowd would draw eyerolls in other films, Clown in a Cornfield surprises. Craig and Cesare write the teens with authenticity in mind, not as lazy teenage tropes. The actors (who don’t have an enormous chance for character building due to the 90-minute run time) are developed meaningfully with vignettes that pay off later. Katie Douglas offers the strongest performance of the young ensemble, but expect plenty of love for Vincent Muller, too.
Mayor Hill and Sheriff Dunne (a remarkably well-cast Will Sasso) harp on hard work and small-town values. The high-schoolers sit back and smirk. There is no reward for being left behind in the U.S.; you have to adapt to the times. Yet the elders have thus far refused. Once the Founder’s Day parade blows up, a generational war between the kids and the town’s old guard breaks out. Kettle Springs’ biggest problem used to be a rash of social media videos that Cole’s group made. The teens took Frendo, the mascot of the corn syrup factory, and turned him into a homicidal maniac for clicks. Now, a costumed clown is killing people for real.
Clown in a Cornfield offers a lot of retro-slasher vibes, but it has something on its mind, too. Killers with knives in the suburbs used to be the biggest fear in the U.S. Things have changed. School shootings and mass casualty events have altered the psyche of modern teens: you have to do more to frighten them. With that said, the film doesn’t go for morbid violence; it relies on rollercoaster-type scares that build on tension and pop with a “whoa.” Slashers of late are more obsessed with depicting trauma in a serious light; sometimes it’s enough to be aware of cliches of the genre, and take joy in skewering them. There is a tonal difference between Cesare’s novel and Craig’s film, de-emphasizing the long-term consequences of trauma in favour of a little campy fun.
Frendo is unsettling while also modelling old-school horror icons like Freddy Krueger. He’s not verbal, but the physical mannerisms provided by stunt coordinator and Frendo stand-in B.J. Verot will have you in stitches. It’s a different vibe than Terrifier‘s Art the Clown, but I have no doubt it’ll be just as popular.
As crowd-pleasing as the comedy and inventive violence are, that’s not what impressed me most. The strongest aspect of the film might be the genuine relationship between Quinn and her father. Canadian stalwart Aaron Abrams (scene-stealer in Hannibal) is another highlight of the film. He’s trying to make things right after running away from their tragedy in Philadelphia, but he doesn’t have any idea how to go about it. Parents in horror films are one of two varieties: oblivious or cruel. Abrams’ Dr. Maybrook is neither. It’s the type of character you want to see more of in a film full of them. I already can’t wait for a sequel.
