Main cast: Katie Douglas (Quinn Maybrook), Aaron Abrams (Dr Glenn Maybrook), Carson MacCormac (Cole Hill), Vincent Muller (Rust Vance), Kevin Durand (Arthur Hill), and Will Sasso (Sheriff George Dunne)
Director: Eli Craig
I’ve heard and read so many nice things about Clown in a Cornfield that I can only imagine the hype all came from fans of the book that this movie is based on.
The book, which I haven’t read, seems like it’s marketed as a young adult slasher novel but with “modern theme” — in other words, some secondary characters are gay or non-white — and it was hyped as the best thing ever in a manner that I am sure is completely organic. I suppose the fans of the book must be the most enthusiastic kind, because this movie offers nothing new at all to the modern slasher genre.
As usual, there is some young woman moving into some sleepy town with her father. Quinn Maybrook befriends the local gay best friend sort, Cole Hill, and meet more friends. Then everyone gets killed by some clown called Frendo, except for duh, the heroine and the gay dudes.
We can’t have anything bad happen to the gay dudes, as this is a modern slasher movie for a modern audience, after all.
However, the black guy dies first, if we don’t count the obligatory kills in the opening scene, so I suppose there are some tropes that cannot be left out even if it’s something modern for a modern audience in these modern times.
Seriously, I mean it when this movie brings nothing new. Well, except maybe a lack of romance for the Final Girl, maybe because they ran out of money allocated to white dude hires after hiring someone to play Cole’s ex-boyfriend.
So, watching this movie is like trying to spot how many things in this movie that have already been done to death in slasher films that have come before it. Annoying definitely-not-played-by-way-older-actors “teenagers” without any depths that are just waiting to be killed — yes, they are here. They all talk in the same way as those “teenagers” in Scream and all the other slasher franchises too. ‘
The clown shows up when I expect it to, the kills are rather generic and unmemorable, and even the actors look like dollar-shop version of the more famous actors from more successful franchises.
In the end, I watch this thing with complete apathy. After all, this movie telegraphs its intention clearly — it wants to be the latest in a line of interchangeable slasher franchise for a modern day audience — and it goes about doing it in a most uninspired, safe manner.
Even the pacing is dull. Far too much screen time is spent on dawdling melodrama of surly stereotypes that I just can’t bring myself to care, and when the kills start, the movie doesn’t even have the grace to make them inventive or memorable. Like the rest of the movie, the kills feel like another cynical attempt to emulate past slasher movies without adding much thought or idea of its own.
Then there is that “twist” at the end, which is absurd. I’m to believe that there are so many idiots that somehow share the same dumb idea and manage to carry out the whole plot without tripping over their shoelaces? Mind you, after they have monologued the Final Girl so that I can be clued in on their stupid motives, they all get killed in embarrassingly undignified ways, so the whole thing feels like a twist that is only possible because the plot demands it.
Anyway, this movie does have some “We have budget, actual budget!” polish to the whole thing, so it isn’t too hard on the eyes. However, the acting is mediocre, the plot is utterly forgettable and at places nonsensical, and the whole thing exudes such an unoriginal wannabe vibe that one is better off watching any other “modern day” slasher film that has come before it.
