“Clown In A Cornfield”: A Cult In The Making, Or Another Creepy Clown Misfire?
Sometimes, just the name of a horror movie is enough to make me want to see it. This is precisely the case with “Clown in a Cornfield,” which intrigued me the first time I came across its title. Curiosity turned into anticipation when I saw the cool poster for the movie, in which we see – well, really – a scary clown in something that looks like a field, I’m assuming a cornfield because that’s the name of the film. Then came the relatively favorable reviews, even if not hysterical, and the numbers that show the film was a success, albeit not exceptional.
As a result, when I had the opportunity to see “Clown in a Cornfield,” I was hoping for a sweet horror joy, like… corn. After about an hour and a half of enjoyment, I’m happy to report that the film is more or less what I expected: fun, trashy, and funny, with a bit of gore and almost no scares to take us home. It’s far from original or memorable, but in the short term, it can pass the time very well.
Warning, Horror Clichés Ahead: What Is Clown In A Cornfield About?
The beginning of “Clown in a Cornfield” looks like it came off a horror movie assembly line, for better or worse. Even before the opening credits roll, we’re ticking off elements we’ve seen in too many movies: silly-looking young dudes sitting around a campfire at a party, near a corn syrup factory. An impressive-looking blonde plays the Jack-in-the-Box of a creepy clown, which means there’s going to be some jump scare here because that’s how Jack-in-the-Box works. She makes eye contact with a guy, walks into a cornfield with him, and starts to undress, because there are no more sensual locations than cornfields (“Is that corn, or are you happy to see me, making your $#%^% look like a cob wrapped in green leaves with sweet yellow seeds?”). But then the girl disappears and comes back bleeding, the man runs and encounters a scary scarecrow – another horror cliché – and then a clown, or someone dressed as a clown, who lifts him into the air with a pitchfork, as if he were a Jeepers Creepers after months of working out at the gym.
Immediately after that, we meet our heroine and a few more horror clichés. Young Quinn (Katie Douglas, “Ginny and Georgia,” “Pretty Hard Cases,” “Mary Kills People”) lives with her father (Aaron Abrams, the TV series “Hannibal” and “Blindspot”), a doctor by profession, after a family tragedy. They attempt to start a new chapter in a large and slightly creepy house in the isolated town of Kettle Springs, Missouri. They discover that there is no cell reception (Like Duh), and that something is dead in the chimney. Quinn meets the slightly strange neighbor Rust (Vincent Muller, “Riverdale”) and starts learning about the hole they are in. At the new and threatening school, there is an annoying teacher who decides to confine her along with a few other young people for some unclear reason.
The confinement is a great opportunity for Quinn to connect with everyone she is told not to communicate with. The guys introduce her to the story of the town, which developed around the local factory founded by the family of a cute guy (Carson MacCormac, “Shazam!”, “The Luckiest Girl Alive”) to produce corn syrup called “Baypen.” At one point, the factory was burned down – supposedly due to the young people’s fault – and caused a catastrophe in the town, with many families losing their source of income.
Every year, the town holds a festival that preserves the tradition and puts Frendo the Clown, the character on the Baypen label, who is supposed to be cute, at its center. The gang decided to make him a serial killer on their YouTube channel, but in horror films, this is a prophecy that often comes true very quickly.
From there, you probably already understood where the film will develop: someone, someone or something dressed like Frendo will start chasing the young people and killing them in creative ways, with diverse weapons such as chainsaws or arrows, in various locations that will at some point also include huge corn fields or the abandoned syrup factory. At the same time, we will try to understand as viewers who exactly is there under the mask, a revelation that comes a little too early for my taste and is far from surprising.
The film introduces several supporting characters who become potential suspects in what’s going on here, such as the mayor, the corrupt sheriff, or a creepy old man who says something like “Don’t fuck with Frendo,” but we’ll stop there. Just check out the trailer:
The Comeback Of Eli Craig
“Clown in a Cornfield” is based on a book of the same name written in 2020 by young author Adam Cesare, a graduate of film and English studies at Boston University. The book won him the Bram Stoker Award for Best Young Adult Novel from the Horror Writers Association (HWA) International. Following the success of the book, Cesare wrote two more sequels, “Clown in a Cornfield 2: Frendo Lives” and “Clown in a Cornfield 3: The Church of Frendo” (2024), which may also be made into films, because overall the film adaptation of “Clown in a Cornfield” was quite successful. It grossed approximately $10 million, an impressive sum considering its budget was only around $1 million. It managed to break the record for IFC Films, an American independent film distribution company, previously held by the excellent “Late Night with the Devil” in 2023.
The film’s director is Eli Craig, who broke out in 2010 with the cult classic “Tucker and Dale vs. Evil”, one of the best horror parodies I recall from recent decades. The truth is, Craig had been a bit some kind of a mystery since the breakout. He directed the pilot episode for the TV series “Zombieland,” which unfortunately never became a series. In 2017, he wrote and directed his second film, a cute horror comedy called “Little Evil,” which premiered on Netflix, starring Adam Scott and Evangeline Lilly, about a man who suspects his stepson may be a bit of a demon. In between, he also married Sasha Williams, the actress who played the Yellow Power Ranger at one point, not the character of the same name from “The Walking Dead,” and that’s it.
“Clown in a Cornfield” brings Craig back into the picture, showing that he hasn’t forgotten about making movies. The film is primarily well-made, entertaining at times (don’t expect brilliant humor like “Tucker and Dale vs. Evil”), and includes some creative kills. As a die-hard horror fan, I was missing a few more humorous references to the genre, including parodies of existing films, because their successful execution – and we saw that Craig knows how to create humor – could have elevated the film by several degrees.
The cast of “Clown in a Cornfield” as a whole does a good job, at times excellent. Quinn is cool, cynical, and funny, and Douglas indeed manages to build her sympathetically. Her relationship with that guy is presented interestingly, with enough chemistry between them, yet also a certain distance, which helps to understand the complexity of the situation. There are some very plausible characters here, but like many other slashers – characters who remain at the level of stereotypes (say, a burly athlete) or are there to justify the fact that this is a slasher, where the only requirement for some of the characters is that they have a throat that someone can cut.
What Is The Meaning Of Clown In A Cornfield?
On the surface, “Clown in a Cornfield” is another slasher about a clown or clowns who chase and kill young people, mainly because some of them are super dumb. Beneath the surface, several other themes emerge, some of which are significant.
You can’t talk about corn in the world of horror and not discuess “Children of the Corn,” a short story by Stephen King from 1977 that was turned into a pretty successful film in 1984, which spawned seven (!) very mediocre sequels, a remake, a prequel, and even cheap parodies (like “Sharks of the Corn”. Damn).
If you missed it, the main plot of “Children of the Corn” is about a cult of psychotic children who kill adults. “Clown in a Cornfield” recalls this starting point, partly because Kettle Springs reminded me a bit of the farming town of Gatlin, Nebraska, in Stephen King’s story. On the other hand, since my exposure to cornfields is mainly based on horror movies and the repetitive family activities of spending massive amounts of time picking something from a field, which, for some reason, always seem the same to me. It may be challenging for me to distinguish cornfields from other fields. Hell, you could change the name of the film to “Clown in a Date Grove” or “Clown in a Watermelon Patch,” and I’m not sure I would have noticed the difference.
The film takes its plot in a different direction (no spoilers) and effectively addresses, either directly or indirectly, some social issues. Not only at the level of a town left behind in the 1990s, but also in terms of relevant topics such as generational gaps, parents’ expectations versus reality, young people’s feeling that adults are ignoring them or even against them, the impact of technology on interpersonal relationships, and so on.
The film was featured in various Pride events throughout the month of Pride worldwide. The reason is that there are two characters here who, at a certain point, we discover, not really surprisingly (of course, if you know how to look for these kinds of clues in advance), that they are homosexual. It’s hard to say that the homoerotic narrative is the primary focus of the film or that this is a film that has represented LGBT culture for years. To the credit of the script, it presented this dynamic in an interesting, relatively developed, and entertaining way at times.
A Film That Gets Lost In The Cornfields
The bottom line is that “Clown in a Cornfield” is a decent film that operates on several levels but fails to excel in any of them. It is enjoyable and entertaining, particularly in terms of the character’s reactions to the situation and the generational differences that emerge. A scene in which two characters do not call the police because they are trying to figure out what the old phone in the house they entered is, for example, was entertaining. On the negative side, some of the jokes are repetitive or miss the mark slightly: the humor here is a little less successful, in my opinion, than that of other recent slashers, such as “Totally Killer” or “Heart Eyes.”
It has a lot of kills, some of which are creative, but not overly extreme or gory, in the style of Eli Roth’s successful “Thanksgiving”. The clowns themselves are well-made, although it’s only in recent years that we’ve seen ones that are more likely to accompany you in your dreams. The horror is based in most cases on jump scares, more or less effective (Jack in the Box, anyone?), or on chases in cornfields against killers: it’s fun, especially for those who like “horror maze”-style films or escapes from clowns with a saw in cornfields, but it’s hard to say that there were any scenes here that I took home with me. There is also the aspect of short horror films starring Frendo that the young ones create, some of which are funny or entertaining. In several cases, the viewer wonders if what happens in the movie is part of a joke or a prank, but the script (which Craig wrote with Carter Blanchard) misses the mark a bit.
As a close horror viewer who likes to put my brain to work in every slasher, attempting to understand who exactly is behind the murders and why, I found myself accepting the solutions that the film offered with peace of mind – and with some disappointment. Without spoilers, there is no innovative or overly sophisticated idea here that we have not already encountered in other films. The twist comes relatively early and changes the film’s style, for better or worse.
What is more, there is a problem of pacing here, because precisely at the moments that are supposed to be the most tense, some of the characters start with rather tedious explanations about something that we have already understood on our own, and thev creators could convey in a more friendly way to the viewer. Some of the characters who star in this twist are not developed enough for us to connect with their story or rationale, which also causes a certain emotional disconnect. And it is a shame, because the frame story here is relevant and meaningful.
Should You Watch Clown In A Cornfield?
If we return to the starting point, we can say that “Clown in a Cornfield” largely delivered what you can expect of a film of this type, given its generic title and the clown hiding in the field on the poster. It is not a masterpiece in any sense, but a worthy product in a period that has brought slasher films back into fashion (yes!) and further strengthened the status of creepy clowns.
The most obvious step is to conclude the article by suggesting that “Clown in a Cornfield” is somewhat like the components that make it up. It is entertaining and a bit creepy like a clown, gets lost like a person in a giant cornfield, and manages to be sweet and “tasty” for consumption by the average horror viewer. It may be appropriate to say here that, like the product at the center of the plot – if I understood it correctly from Wikipedia, because why the hell would I know anything about corn syrup – this film is a bit like corn syrup in a squeeze bottle. It’s sweet, cheap, sticky, and fun, just what you need when you’re hungry for a light horror, small amounts of which can be addictive.
Clown in a Cornfield (2005) – Frequently Asked Questions
Who directed Clown in a Cornfield? The film was directed by Eli Craig, best known for directing the masterclass “Tucker & Dale vs. Evil” something like 15 years ago.
Who plays in Clown in a Cornfield? The cast of the film includes Katie Douglas, Aaron Abrams, Carson MacCormac, Kevin Durand, and Will Sasso.
Who wrote Clown in a Cornfield? Eli Craig and Carter Blanchard wrote the script, based on the book “Clown in a Cornfield” by Adam Cesare.
How long is Clown in a Cornfield? The movie’s length is 96 minutes.
Where was the film filmed? Production took place in the United States, Luxembourg, the United Kingdom, and Canada.
What languages can you hear in the film? English, scary clown giggles
When was Clown in a Cornfield released to theaters? The Release date of the film in the United States is May 9, 2025.
What was the budget of Clown in a Cornfield? According to reports, the estimated budget of the film was as little as $ 1 million.
How much did the movie gross? Clown in a Cornfield grossed about $ 10 million, according to Box Office Mojo.
What do the reviews say about Clown in a Cornfield? On IMDB, Clown in a Cornfield currently holds a 5.7 (out of 10) rating. On Rotten Tomatoes, its rating is slightly better, as 73% of critics gave it a positive review (“Tomatometer”).
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