Film Review - Clown in a Cornfield
Images courtesy of Studio Canal.
What do you get when a sinister clown terrorises a rusted, forgotten town - a town that built an economy on the back of its corn syrup business, no less? The aptly named Clown in a Cornfield, is a throwback slasher that does little to elevate the genre beyond its meat and potatoes thrills, yet delivers on them in such an effortless and efficient manner that one can't help but be endeared to it. Marrying the charm of a post-Scream meta comedy with a film that's playing things straight on paper results in an oddball cocktail, one that director Eli Craig, the mind behind modern horror/comedy classic Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, serves up with wild abandon.
Based on the first in a trilogy of young adult novels by Adam Cesare, the story follows Quinn Maybrook (Katie Douglas), a sharp and resilient teen freshly uprooted from the big city after a personal tragedy. Moving with her father to the decaying town of Kettle Springs, Missouri, Quinn finds herself in a place where the ghost of a once-thriving corn syrup factory still haunts the community. Its former mascot, Frendo the Clown, has taken on a new, sinister life - transforming from a nostalgic relic into a vengeful harbinger of chaos. The film’s setting, a community clinging to past glories and bitter over current woes, becomes the perfect ground for a coming of age meet-cute stained blood red.
Quinn quickly falls in with a ragtag group of local misfits whose idea of fun is to stage fake slasher scenes for social media clout. Their prank videos - playful at first - set off a chain reaction that blurs the line between the town's real past and modern day urban legend. What really makes Clown in a Cornfield pop is its effortlessly inventive tweaking of the familiar slasher formula. Little things like seeing a villain get a limb shotgunned off immediately after their intimidating reveal, the main characters’ father being kidnapped - not because of his relation to her, but because the killers need a doctor to operate on one of their posse - and a love triangle reveal that had the audience cheering, all go a long way to add that hint of seasoning that many other satire-slashers are missing.
At its core, Clown in a Cornfield is doing nothing overly new, but everything it does is delivered with just enough chutzpah to make it worth more than the sum of its parts, and an admirable addition to the pantheon of killer clown films. Clornfield knows exactly what it is and isn't self conscious about it, playing out like an R-rated episode of Scooby Doo, complete with some lean and mean kills that feel reminiscent of the blunt-force trauma of Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, complimenting its steady slew of bodies without ever feeling the need to get as nasty as something like last year's Terrifier 3.
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Clown in a Cornfield is screening in cinemas now. For tickets and more info, click here.