Based on the 2020 novel of the same name by Adam Cesare, Clown in a Cornfield follows 17-year-old Quinn Maybrook (Katie Douglas) and her father (Aaron Abrams) moving to Kettle Springs, Missouri. After the passing of Quinn’s mother the previous summer, Kettle Springs had an opening for a family doctor which caused the surviving Maybrooks to move from the big city to a small rural town.
The local corn syrup factory burned down recently and its mascot, a clown named Frendo, has become a celebratory icon for Kettle Springs. With a town holiday known as Founders Day fast approaching, the townsfolk are noticeably on edge with new people moving in and the younger generation making dreaded internet videos.
As Quinn tries to make friends in a town she never wanted to move to, an actual killing spree by someone wearing a clown costume drenches Kettle Springs in a sea of blood.
The clown sequences in Clown in a Cornfield are the film's highlights. Interestingly, a jack-in-the-box toy pops up whenever someone is about to die prompting you to think of a connection or deeper meaning to Frendo that never actually occurs. But some of the kills are incredibly solid like the gnarly chainsaw kill in the middle of the cornfield, the barbell kill you see glimpses of in the trailer, and a brutal pitchfork sequence that results in two deaths.
Everything in between teenagers getting slaughtered is rather clunky. Clown in a Cornfield doubles down on this The Breakfast Club meets Dead & Buried ambiance, but never quite gets there. Kettle Springs sees MadTV’s Will Sasso as the town sheriff and it’s bizarre. He plays the role completely straight, but Sheriff Dunne is rather forgettable otherwise.
The cast is mostly fine when it comes to passable performances. Katie Douglas slides into her role as Quinn Maybrook more comfortably as the film progresses and as the events in the film become more hectic. Early on in the film, it’s as if Douglas has this permanent pouty face and duck lips expression that is entirely obnoxious.
Kevin Durand is the unexpected delight of the cast though. Durand has always been a supporting actor that is a sleeper hit in whatever he pops up in with Abigail and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes being prime examples. As Arthur Hill, Durand initially comes off as a stereotypical father who is part of a lucrative family that founded the town. But he evolves into something else entirely that is wholly crucial to the circus-themed massacre.
The slasher film introduces a blood feud between the older and younger generations. High school students are sneered at, looked down on, and judged for things they didn’t ever do or think about doing. The sheriff seems to make his laws and teachers dish out detention for no reason.
There’s a reveal regarding Frendo that transpires roughly halfway through the film that feels like it happens entirely too soon. Co-writer and director Eli Craig (Tucker and Dale vs Evil) and co-writer Carter Blanchard (uncredited screenwriter on Independence Day: Resurgence) could have teased this reveal for far longer. It would have been much more satisfying.
The friends that Quinn makes in Kettle Springs are the more popular high school kids but are also the most troublesome. They have a YouTube channel with over 600K subscribers and their content is short horror films featuring one of them dressed as Frendo killing people. It results in this troublesome dynamic where when a clown does start killing people nobody believes them. They don’t even believe it themselves at first even when they start being targeted.
There isn’t a ton of humor in Clown in a Cornfield, but at least two instances come to mind that are fairly amusing. The sequence where Quinn and Janet (Cassandra Potenza) don’t know how to operate a rotary phone is classic and it’s a shame that it’s given away in the trailer. Older technology in general like driving a car with a manual transmission is a concept Clown in a Cornfield explores quite a bit.
There’s also a moment when two girls are tossing around a severed head like a hot potato because they think it’s fake. They have this bitchy back-and-forth that is very LSP from Adventure Time interacting with a minor inconvenience kind of commentary and it’s fantastic.
Clown in a Cornfield displays moments of coulrophobic greatness. Frendo is a brutal psychopath whose weird devotion to the clown art form (like his big shoes that squeak when he walks during the most tense moments of stalking his prey) attempts to make the audience laugh through the moments of terror.
The film is overflowing with palpable teenage energy though. Clown in a Cornfield is based on a young adult novel, so it’s expected but the constant barrage of “adults just don’t understand us” and the nonstop desire to drink themselves stupid at every opportunity becomes predictable and tiresome.
The kills are entertaining, but the young versus old debacle and less than surprising Frendo “twist” makes Clown in a Cornfield decent, but not memorable.
