From its title, Clown in a Cornfield sounds like something you’d see scrolling through Tubi. This is not a knock on films found on Tubi, a seriously rich trove of schlock and classics that puts most streaming services to shame.
Eli Craig’s third feature is much like his debut, the cult classic Tucker and Dale vs Evil. A movie long on gore, but big on heart and wit. Adapted from Adam Cesare’s book of the same name by Craig and Carter Blanchard, Clown in a Cornfield wears its influences and tropes proudly on its sleeve.
I didn’t know quite what to expect walking into Craig’s latest goofy splatterfest. I hadn’t seen a lot of advertising or even a trailer. But as the film opened and I realized that it was almost shot for shot, beat for beat, the same as the opening of Jaws, I grinned like an idiot. I couldn’t help but think of the Dutch filmmaker Dick Mass, a purveyor of ridiculous horror concepts who is absolutely obsessed with Jaws, to the point that many of his films merely substitute a killer elevator or serial killer for the shark.
As I watched Clown in a Cornfield I couldn’t help but giggle at the sly wink the film was giving us. It didn’t stop and explain to us what it was doing, being content to merely merrily skip along its trope-laden path. At the same time, it finds ways to skew these tropes without flashing red lights around them so you’d notice.
Among the film’s impressive feats is how adroitly Craig and Blanchard set up the lore of the small town of Kettle Springs, the Baypen factory, the Baypen mascot Frendo the clown, and of the Hill family. By itself this is nothing to write home about, but for a modern slasher, the way it doles out information without stopping the film cold in its track, its a close to being a miracle.
Not to mention having the killer called Frendo, allows for multiple occasions for characters to use Frendo sarcastically. A task that Craig and Blanchard take up eagerly.
One of my favorite strings of narrative breadcrumbs with a howler of a payoff involves the history of the town’s golden boy, Cole Hill (Carson MacCormac), and town loner Rust (Vincent Muller). Craig and Blanchard take the tropes of two dudes with a history and find a sly way of turning the subtext into text. They just so happen to do it in a way that might be one of the best laughs in the movie.
The mean popular girl, Janet (Cassandra Potenza), isn’t a cheerleader but a budding director of YouTube videos. The popular crowd still has jocks, but now they make an online series about a serial killer clown inspired by the real life mascot of the one thriving corn syrup factory. Oddly, in Craig and Blanchard’s script, they aren’t even that popular, but rather just well known.
Even the final girl of the film, Quinn (Katie Douglas), isn’t a special girl with some mystical or past connection to the killer; she’s just a girl trying to survive the night and recover from the loss of her mother. Her father, the new town doctor Glenn (Aaron Abrams), is a good egg and tries his best to prepare Quinn for the world. Then again, even the best father can’t prepare his daughter for Frendo.
It’s a shame characters have to die in slashers, because the trio of Quinn, Janet, and Ronnie (Verity Marks) were a real highlight of the film. The three have a real comic energy and gave some of the best laughs as they had to weigh the realties of the situations with the absurdities. Quinn and Janet unable to figure out a rotary phone being one of my favorite bits.
The other bright spot is Kevin Durand’s kooky Arthur Hill, Cole’s father, mayor, and town benefactor. Durand is having a ball as he delights in hamming it up more and more with every scene. Yet, he never fails to register an appropriate amount of “could be sinister could be just a dick” vibes as he channels everyone’s least favorite social media oligarch.
But the real delight of Clown in a Cornfield comes with how it slowly reveals how absurd the situation really is. The thing many modern slashers forget is that the slasher genre doesn’t run on logic. It’s a genre fed purely by the ID. Which is why when a character like Tucker (Ayo Solanke) walks into his bedroom and sees plastic on the floor, he doesn’t think much of it. Rather than be alarmed or buy a clue, he cracks it up to his friends playing a prank.
The conceit of having the kids make a YouTube series about a killer clown is genius, for it gives them enough breathing room to ignore obvious danger signs as merely being set up for one of their videos. However, if I ever walked into a room with plastic on the floor, and it turned out to be a prank, my friend would have some hands coming his way.
Clown in a Cornfield is a clever movie that never tries to boast about how smart it is. Instead it focuses on how much fun and outrageous everything is. Like when Quinn discovers the one get away vehicle is a stick. Douglas’s delivery of a line about not learning to drive stick, is one of my favorite deliveries of the film.
Shot by Brian Pearson, a cameraman who has shot films like the classic American Mary and the not-so-classic straight-to-DVD slog Into the Storm, Clown in a Cornfield has a glossy finish along with a sharp, comical eye. Pearson and Craig manage to pull off the neat hat trick of having night scenes where you can see what’s going on AND lighting their non-white actors correctly. Pearson finds the perfect balance between meat-and-potatoes framing and visual wit.
Craig and Pearson imbue Clown in a Cornfield with enough of a 90s vibe that it’s easy to forget that it’s taken place during the modern day. Even Quinn’s fashion sense seems ripped from the decade of alt-rock. Her checkered pants triggered some sense memories within me that I was unprepared for.
I won’t mention what unravels with Frendo the clown; suffice to say it leads to someone saying the line, “If you tell people whatever they want to hear, you can get away with murder.” And if you still think movies aren’t political, then I have a wonderful deal on the Eiffel Tower I’d like to offer you. Except, as much as I appreciate the political aspect of Clown in a Cornfield, it is the film’s main weakness.
Craig and Blanchard spend a lot of time having fun with the “kids these days” mentality that pervades both these films and our culture. But it’s not that deep and is more poking fun like one would poke a bear. Its social consciousness being deeper compared to its class consciousness, which is not a complaint so much as an observation.
I don’t know, maybe I’m just a sucker for slasher films that have Will Sasso as the bumbling backwoods sheriff and take place during holidays like Founder’s Day that I didn’t mind how politically shallow it was. Clown in a Cornfield isn’t too meta to be annoying and not so cliché as to be lazy. It’s a helluva lot of fun.
Images courtesy of RLJE Films and Shudder
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