USA/Canada. 2025.
Crew
Director – Eli Craig, Screenplay – Carter Blanchard & Eli Craig, Based on the Novel Clown in a Cornfield (2020) by Adam Cesare, Producers – Marty Bowen, Terry Douglas, John Fischer, Wyck Godfrey, Paris Kassidokostas-Latsis & Isaac Klausner, Photography – Brian Pearson, Music – Brandon Roberts & Marcus Trumpp, Visual Effects – Urban Prairie Post Production (Supervisor – Darren Wall), Special Effects Supervisor – Casey Markus, Production Design – Brian Kane. Production Company – Temple Hill/Rhea Films/Thundersnow Pictures/1821 Studios.
Cast
Katie Douglas (Quinn Maybrook), Aaron Abrams (Dr Glenn Maybrook), Carson MacCormac (Cole Hill), Vincent Muller (Rust), Kevin Durand (Arthur Hill), Will Sasso (Sheriff Dunne), Cassandra Potenza (Janet), Verity Marks (Ronnie), Ayo Solanke (Tucker), Bradley Sawatzky (Mr Vern)
Plot
Seventeen-year-old Quinn Maybrook relocates to Kettle Hills in the American Midwest along with her father. At school, she connects with a social group who spend much time shooting YouTube prank videos where she becomes involved with Cole Hill. They come up against Sheriff Dunne who seems to have it in for the group of teens. Cole in particular is blamed for a fire that destroyed the closed down Baypen corn syrup factory. As the group set about partying, a group of figures wearing the masks of Frendo, the Baypen mascot, emerge and begin killing.
The killer clown film has been with us ever since the late 1980s with the likes of Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988), Clownhouse (1989) and the original tv mini-series version of It (1990). With the success of the big screen remake of It (2017), the killer clown film has taken off in a big way to the point it is now its own genre niche and we have been inundated with an alley of low-budget killer clown copies. (For a more detailed listing see Killer Clown Films). Clown in the Cornfield is the first of these since It 2017 to be made on a decent budget.
In this case, the film is adapted from Clown in a Cornfield (2020) by Adam Cesare, which won the Bram Stoker Award for Best Young Adult Novel to which Cesare has currently spun this off into two sequels. The film version is made by Eli Craig, the son of Sally Field, who had a modest hit several years ago with the Backwoods Brutality comedy Tucker and Dale vs. Evil (2010), which has since gained a modest cult following. His one other film has been Little Evil (2017), a parody of the Devil Child films.
Since the mid-2010s, the killer clown film has gravitated into the arena of the same gonzo mash-up fields that the killer shark film and zombie film exist in these days. See the likes of Cannibal Clown Killer (2015), Clown of the Dead (2015), Space Clown (2016), Clowntergeist (2017), Clowna Nostra (2019), Clownado (2019), ClownDoll (2019), House of Clowns (2022), Lair of the Killer Clowns (2023) and Camp Blood: Clown Shark (2024), for a random selection of titles.
The problem here is that Clown in the Cornfield comes with a title that leads you to expect that it is another gonzo entry with a Deliberately Ridiculous Title – one that seems to embody a mash-up between the killer clown film and something like Children of the Corn (1984) and one of its sequels. However, this is exactly what we don’t get.
As it sets in, Clown in the Cornfield only ends up resembling a very ordinary and formulaic teen horror film. In fact, as we watch the teens running around pulling pranks on the teacher (Bradley Sawatzky) and vandalising the local convenience store for their videos, you are only struck about what an unlikeable group they are. When the clowns start popping up to kill them, the film arrives at around the level of other formulaic teen horror films – see the likes of Truth or Dare (2018), Countdown (2019), Polaroid (2019) and Tarot (2024).
There is the occasional moment where Clown in the Cornfield proves more interesting than this – like the scene where one of the girls stumbles out of the cornfield with an arrow in her back, followed by a severed head thrown out, and the rest of the teens automatically assume it is another prank. When the clown attacks begin after that point, the film gains more teeth. Even so, there are ironically meta lines – “It’s like we’re in some awful eighties slasher horror movie in the corn” – that fall flat. (The actual funniest scene in the film was the one where the teens pick up a phone to call for help and find it is a rotary phone and they have no idea what buttons to push). The ending subverts the standard romance of the show, although it feels like a clunky insert for diversity approval.
Most of the other killer clown films had their resident menace being either a slasher movie psycho, or something supernatural in nature. They are very few films in the field that do not fall into either category. Clown in the Cornfield is certainly different here. You have what seems to be clowns brought to life by supernatural means – the appearance throughout of a wind-up music box with pop-up clown gives strong suggestion that they are being summoned in some way. (This is even something that is maintained in the last shot of the film). You expect some kind of haunting aspect to kick in. It then becomes jolting when you see the clowns being hit and damaged by shotgun blasts and the like, even a scene where one of the clowns forces doctor Aaron Abrams to operate on his fellow clown. This and the end revelation about [PLOT SPOILERS] all of this being a charade placed on by the townspeople as a protest against change in their community punctures the mythic boogeyman figure of the killer clown has and brings it down to Earth in disappointing ways. Not to mention the revelation is far-fetched ie. fails to give any plausible reason as to why townspeople are going around dressed in clown suits killing people.
Trailer here