“Clown in a Cornfield” attempts to shift the expectations around the modern slasher film, keeping viewers on their toes about what’s actually going on in this small town that appears to be under assault from a murderous clown. Eli Craig's film has an energy that reminds me of "It" and "Scream." It's clever and thrilling in bloody spurts, but it never quite reaches its full potential. Like the kids at its core who use horror imagery for likes, it’s ultimately a bit shallower than it should have been. It's kind of creepy and funny, but not enough of either, like actual clowns. Nonetheless, the "Tucker and Dale vs." series' high-quality kills should satisfy genre fans. Evil" producer. Sometimes, that’s what really matters most for a film like this one. After all, everybody loves a clown.
Working with co-writer Carter Blanchard, Craig adapts the novel of the same name by Adam Cesare, a tale that will echo Eli Roth’s “Thanksgiving” in its mingling of a town’s dark history with the young people trying to write their own futures. Katie Douglas, who stars in "Ginny & Georgia," plays Quinn Maybrook, the story's Sidney Prescott. Quinn Maybrook has moved from Philadelphia to the Missouri factory town of Kettle Springs. When the factory closed, this area experienced the same economic decline as many other cities in this country. The Baypen Corn Syrup Factory, which closed and then burned in an act of arson, was blamed on town bad boy Cole Hill (Carson MacCormac) and his friends, including Matt (Alexandre Martin Deakin), Tucker (Ayo Solanke), Trudy (Daina Leitold), and Janet (Cassandra Potenza). In this instance, it is not coal or automobiles but something sweeter: One of many slight shifts here is that the group that would be the most popular kids in most slasher pics are looked at as enemies by everyone in town.
Cole’s protestations of innocence haven’t been helped by the fact that he and his buddies have warped the image of Baypen’s figurehead, a smiling clown named Frendo, by creating viral videos in which the cheery clown turns violent. After an encounter with a teacher who is clearly targeting these teens ends up pulling Quinn into the same net, she starts a flirtation with Cole that her doctor dad (Aaron Abrams) considers dangerous, in part because of what Sheriff Dunne (Will Sasso) says about this group of clown-loving outsiders. Things get weird and bloody as Cole's wealthy father, played by Kevin Durand, roams the set. Has Frendo actually come to life as a Pennywise-esque villain? Or is there another issue at hand? “Clown in a Cornfield” builds to an impressive sequence when a teen party “goes Shudder” with increasingly insane deaths. The energy in these and other death scenes in "Clown" is barely sufficient. But I was still hoping that the thrills would build to something a little bit more satisfying than the blunt exposition dump that literally comes after someone asks what's going on in the final act. It’s hard to write about some of the underdeveloped themes of “Cornfield” without spoiling it, so forgive the vagueness, but I found Craig’s film much more interesting when it was just allowed to be chaotic instead of when it was explaining the chaos.
Naturally, it is not a spoiler to say that Cole, Quinn, and their friends are misunderstood by the traditional community around them. That’s a common horror theme, especially the ones that influenced this project: The kids will have to be alright on their own because the generation before them sold them out, are useless, or both. Craig employs charming young actors, particularly the excellent Douglas, wisely in his film. After that, he fights them off with a supporting cast of rude, useless adults (aside from Quinn's father, who is played well by Abrams). If parts of “Clown in a Cornfield” feel undercooked, it’s almost forgivable for not just the bloody make-up work but where the film lands: The real clowns are the people trying to hold the next generation back.