Clown in a Cornfield

Grade: B-

Clown in a Cornfield has a line that I missed in the theater. I found the scene online, and listened several times, but, frustratingly, still couldn’t make it out. I came across an AMA (ask me anything) on Reddit, started by the director. I posted the question “what did he say in this scene?” I tell this story to illustrate that I cared enough about the movie to ask the whole internet (including the director) about some dialogue I couldn’t hear.

With a title like Clown in a Cornfield, you can anticipate exactly what you’re going to get. The main plot point – really, the only one – is there is a killer clown who hangs out in a vast cornfield, and picks off any partiers who go in there to pee or canoodle with each other. We see a kill at the beginning, which takes place in the late 1990s, and then we cut to the present day, as a widowed father and daughter move to this town.

They are Glenn (Aaron Abrams) and Quinn (Katie Douglas). I just learned that they are only 10 years apart in age, and Douglas is much older than I thought. This 36-year-old actress is able to step into the shoes of a high school student, and I was none the wiser. The town elders are exaggeratedly stuffy, to the point where punishments that had no reason to happen keep getting doled out. Quinn gets detention on her first day of school, and later, another character gets arrested. Both of which are head-scratchers.

There’s the obligatory horror scene, taking place around a fire, where Quinn’s new friends – longtime locals – bring her up to speed on the lore of the cornfield clown killer, known as Friendo. They choose to spend an awful lot of time hanging out by this cornfield at night for knowing so much about this, but there wouldn’t have been a novel (and later, this movie) otherwise.

I admired that there’s nothing supernatural involved. Friendo isn’t a mysterious fictional horror film archetype. All of this could have really transpired. There are laughs to be had, like when they try to call 911 in a moment of crisis, and these smartphone-using millennials are baffled by the landline rotary phone. “Where are the buttons?” I liked when the murders started happening and they don’t take it seriously at first, thinking it’s a prank. They are tossing around a friend’s decapitated head, figuring it’s a well-done dummy. “Ew, I just got corn syrup all over me.” There’s a cleverly timed sight gag involving a hand over a mouth. The movie revels in the Talking Killer scene, with someone channeling Jack Nicholson in Batman, doing the biggest explaining that explainers have ever explainated. There is, excuse me, corny fun to be had, of the B-movie, straight-to-streaming, unrecognizable actors variety.

If a movie is uneven, it usually has a strong beginning and first part, then runs out of steam and coasts. Clown in a Cornfield is the opposite. It starts out mundane and pedestrian, but it escalates into something that I was fairly on board with by the end. It’s campy, ridiculous, and it 1,000% knows it. It proudly stays in its lane and doesn’t pretend to be absolutely anything other than what it is. And in a funny way, it’s better than many films that aim higher.

Grade: B-