As the title suggests, Clown in a Cornfield is a horror romp rife with tropes and gags reminiscent of classic slasher films from the 1970s and '80s. The movie finds its footing by leaning heavily into the camp of that era, playing to all of the major motifs, right up until it doesn't, at which point its subversion of the genre branches off into fun and novel ideas.
Led by Burlington, ON's own Katie Douglas (known best for her role as Abby on Netflix's Ginny & Georgia), Clown in a Cornfield follows Quinn Maybrook (Douglas), a teenager from Philadelphia, PA, who moves to the small town of Kettle Springs, MO, with her father (Aaron Abrams) following her mother's death.
Quinn falls in with the popular crowd upon receiving detention on her first day at school, getting close with their de facto leader, Cole Hill (Carson MacCormac), nearly instantly. She quickly learns that Cole and his crew's popularity extends to the rest of the town's population for all the wrong reasons. Notable troublemakers due to their internet exploits, the townsfolk unfairly hold them responsible for the Baypen Corn Syrup Factory burning to the ground, despite evidence to the contrary; this tragedy has left the town fractured and its residents struggling.
As she attempts to assimilate to living in her new town, Quinn and her newfound friends find themselves in the middle of a nightmare with Baypen's beloved mascot, Frendo the Clown, at the centre of it all.
Much like a victim of Frendo's would be, this film is split into two halves — the first half following the standard fare slasher, campy and centred around a group of rebellious teenagers and the looming threat of gruesome death. The second is where the film subverts expectations, not necessarily by trying to reinvent the wheel, but by building upon the subgenre's existing conventions and scaling everything up. While the film unfortunately gets a bit muddier here, feeling a little less streamlined than the first half, it ultimately sticks the landing, mainly by not taking itself too seriously.
The only hiccup in the film that abandons that philosophy comes late in the movie, when one of the characters delivers a brief, noticeably heavy-handed piece of dialogue that is legitimately eye roll-inducing. Thankfully, it's only a minor (albeit very apparent) blip in a film that otherwise fully commits to being as amusing and light as a story featuring a murderous clown can possibly be.
That levity, in conjunction with the film's brisk pacing and tight 96-minute runtime, is what keeps Clown in a Cornfield from ever feeling stale. The kills are perfectly sequenced, with every set piece getting bigger and better, doing so without ever being so viscerally violent as to undercut the fun. While an undeniably bloody affair, director Eli Craig never allows the film to become so gratuitously gory that it loses the goofiness at the film's core.
An awareness of its identity is why Clown in a Cornfield works so well. Craig understands what it is and revels in its tropes. A solid, original slasher in an era that has seen the subgenre dominated by remakes, reboots and sequels for existing IPs, the humour works, the kills are creative, and the unexpected shift in direction in the second half will appeal to fans of the genre looking for something new. It may not kill at the box office, but Clown in a Cornfield takes a welcome stab at something new in a genre begging for new life.