Clown in a Cornfield
It’s supposed to be a new start for Doctor Glenn Maybrook and his daughter Quinn, he unable to face the pressure of the city since the death of his wife and relocating them to Kettle Springs, Missouri, but she finding it is almost like she has died herself with her whole life left behind, no friends, no cell reception and little to occupy her with no interest in the local pastimes of hunting and fishing, and immediately at odds with her new teachers.
Finding herself in the company of the supposed “bad kids” in detention, Janet, Ronnie, Tucker, Matt and Cole, son of the mayor, they tell her the history of the town, established a hundred years previously by Cole’s family, its fortune made around Baypen Corn Syrup until the factory closed and later burned down, the Baypen mascot Frendo the Clown the star of the short horror videos the gang shoot and post online, Quinn the unwitting target for their latest prank.
Based on the 2020 novel of the same name by Adam Cesare, Clown in a Cornfield is a teen-led comedy horror directed by Tucker & Dale vs. Evil’s Eli Craig which delivers precisely on the promise and expectation of the title as the annual Founder’s Day festival turns from celebration to slaughter as the sun sets over the drying leaves and densely packed stalks of the titular fields on the outskirts of Kettle Springs.
Starring Katie Douglas as Quinn, Carson MacCormac as Cole, at odds with his father who cuts him no slack, Cassandra Potenza as queen bee Janet, Verity Marks as Ronnie, Ayo Solanke as Tucker, Alexandre Martin Deakin as Matt and Vincent Muller as the Maybrooks’ neighbour Rust, his father out of work since the fire and bagging wild deer to feed them both, the characters are basic but the amiable ensemble make the newfound friendship and the growing fear work.
The adults principally represented by Aaron Abrams as Glenn, Kevin Durand as Mayor Arthur Hill and Will Sasso as Sheriff Dunne, with the town full of history and grudges there are suspects aplenty as to the identity of the individual who now wears the squeaky shoes of Frendo, his calling card the wind-up Jack in the Box which presages his appearances which always end in the death of whomever finds it.
A figure who has stalked the cornfields for generations and passed into the local mythology, a traditional as established as the procession which ends summarily with Quinn and her friends in jail next to the town drunk who serves as harbinger, Clown in a Cornfield is in many ways a by-the-numbers horror playing like a Hallowe’en maze which delights in its smalltown trappings as familiar to the characters as the audience yet still leaves them on the back foot when the killer clown act stops being a joke.
Clown in a Cornfield is currently on general release
