{"id":47628,"date":"2025-05-11T12:01:04","date_gmt":"2025-05-11T16:01:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=47628"},"modified":"2025-07-13T16:17:17","modified_gmt":"2025-07-13T20:17:17","slug":"clown-in-a-cornfield-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/11\/clown-in-a-cornfield-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Clown in a Cornfield (2025)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Upon moving to a small town, teenager Quinn meets a new friend group, along with Fr<\/span>endo, a murderous clown\u2026 in a cornfield in the aptly named Clown in a Cornfield.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Published in 2020, Adam Cesare\u2019s Clown in a Cornfield book trilogy has been a hit among high school students. I recently read the first and enjoyed it far more than I anticipated. It had a solid sense of setting and character, with an unexpected brutality and messaging. I shouldn\u2019t have been surprised, it won the Bram Stoker for Best Young Adult Novel after all. The adaptation, directed by Eli Craig and written by Craig & Carter Blanchard, mostly lives up to the source. Clown in a Cornfield is an energetic and fun modern slasher, with more than enough to plaster a smile on the viewer’s face, if not with some character and plot stumbles.<\/p>\n

Quinn and her dad are new residents to Kettle Springs, Missouri, a former boom town, famous for its brand of corn syrup. The mascot of the company, and by de facto the town’s, was Frendo the Clown. Emblazoned on everything, Frendo looms with the uncanny clown creepiness. He\u2019s also a reminder of the town\u2019s heyday by older generations\u00a0 (including the recognizable character actors Kevin Durand and Will Sasso) and a laughingstock of the younger; he\u2019s even used a serial killer in online shorts by the teens Quinn soon connects with.\u00a0 Before you can call for He Who Walks Behind the Roads, the mythical Frendo becomes fact, a serial killer targeting the very same friend group.<\/p>\n

First, and most important to those coming in from the title looking for a tongue-in-cheek slasher, it delivers on the red stuff. Blood flows with a multitude of deaths in a variety of implementations in the largest corn-based slaughter since Jason when he fought Freddy. The kills are pretty gnarly, often surprising, and mostly practical.\u00a0 Dyed-in-the-wool horror buffs will want to hold more (and with the film coming to Shudder soon, we\u2019ll see how the channel\u2019s fans take it), but there is more than enough to please most. It works within the genre clich\u00e9s, self-aware, and gleeful to provide the expected terrifying pleasures for genre fans.<\/p>\n

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At the center of the clown-based carnage are Quinn and Cole. Quinn is trying to overcome the grief of losing her mother the previous summer, reeling to try to put it together with her also struggling dad. The leader of her new friends, Cole, similarly mourns his sister, dead from an accident for which he was blamed. He is also shouldering the blame for a factory fire that further sank the town\u2019s prospects, becoming the town\u2019s pariah, especially as the son of the mayor and the great-grandson of the founder and Frendo inventor. Katie Douglas as Quinn is a little stilted and awkward, but Carson McCormick is fascinating to watch, with the most to work with. Unfortunately, Quinn and Cole have just about all the character present.<\/p>\n

Where the book insists on building the friend group as actual characters, Blanchard and Craig eschew this build to keep everyone else as bland and interchangeable as possible. If I hadn\u2019t known the characters from the text, I couldn\u2019t tell you their names, relationships, and personalities without seeing their pictures. Cassandra Potenza, Verity Marks, Alexandre Martin Deacon, and Ayo Solanke are fine with what is given, but are empty voids otherwise. While it is normal for slashers to provide too much, as most of the characters are meant to be victims, Cesare was able to create people to care about; I genuinely felt sad when they were chainsaw’d, decapitated, pitchforked, or worse.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s weird, as the script sticks mostly point-by-point to the book. Thus, why cut? The film is only 96 minutes long, a few more lines wouldn\u2019t throw it off. While a film stands on its own, the missing characterization is necessary to drive home the reasons for the slaughter. Without it, I dare say, to reference the Marvel meme, Frendo was Right. The background to the blood is compelling, and leads to conversation, but as it is, it\u2019s empty lip service to ideas not present on screen.<\/p>\n

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In addition to the missing character bits, the film doesn\u2019t feel Done. While halfway through, there\u2019s a frustrating cutaway from an obvious point to deliver on the R rating left hanging, perhaps for pacing or the inevitable unrated home release, there are whole missing aspects of the third act. Of course, I dare not detail for spoilers, but it leaves one head scratching, wondering where the missing elements are when the credits begin to roll. It lacks that last push of a climax. My screening had multiple \u201cwhat?\u201d it\u2019s over?\u201d as the lights came up, thanks to the incomplete finale and denouement. A lot of questions are left unanswered, not in a \u201cwait for the sequel\u201d sort of way.<\/p>\n

However, despite these, Clown in a Cornfield is a highly entertaining film. Eli Craig gives the film a zip and expediency. As the director of Tucker &\u00a0 Dale and Little Evil, he has a skill for blending comedy and horror well. The technical aspects come together with a great look and effective scare set-ups.\u00a0 Craig uses the space well, creating creepy locations, whether it be the titular cornfield, abandoned factories, a dying town, or elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Clown in a Cornfield is an entertaining slasher. The clown design will be iconic, and the kills of Frendo are mean and bloody. Some of the strengths of the book didn\u2019t make it to the screen, but overall, it works.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Upon moving to a small town, teenager Quinn meets a new friend group, along with Frendo, a murderous clown\u2026 in a cornfield in the aptly named Clown in a Cornfield.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[477,950],"class_list":["post-47628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-horror","tag-slasher"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47628"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47629,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47628\/revisions\/47629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}