Clown in a Cornfield

This week’s recommendation is Clown in a Cornfield, a new slasher film based on the 2020 novel written by Adam Cesare. It is directed by Eli Craig, who you may know as the co-writer and director of Tucker and Dale vs Evil (2010).

The story follows Quinn, a teenager who recently moved to the small town of Kettle Springs in the wake of her mother’s death. Quinn quickly befriends a group of local troublemaking YouTubers and learns about the corn syrup company that made Kettle Creek successful, including its beloved mascot Frendo the clown.

CiaC offers a fun approach to the slasher genre, mixing in comedy and genre-awareness in a manner akin to Scream, if somewhat toned down. It starts off by-the-book with a group of 20-something teenagers getting picked off one-by-one by a killer clown. Around the midpoint there’s a change-up that, while not entirely unique, is done in an interesting way.

The film has some fairly brutal kills with a moderate amount of gore, my favorite of which involves a barbell and a sawblade. On top of this, there’s a good amount of variety in methods/weapons. The integration of modern elements such as internet culture is something that traditional media often doesn’t execute well but felt natural within the film, meshing well with the themes of generational clashes.

The movie isn’t perfect, with a few lines being eye-rollers, the messaging being a bit on-the-nose, the big reveal being predictable from the mid-movie twist and the dude next to me in the cinema stealing my cup-holder (which was a puzzling choice on the behalf of the director), but if you go in expecting a slasher, you’ll have a good time.