Rating: R | Runtime: 96 minutes
Release Date: May 9th, 2025 (USA)
Studio: RLJE Films / Shudder
Director(s): Eli Craig
Writer(s): Carter Blanchard and Eli Craig / Adam Cesare (novel)

You’d rather kill us than just listen.

I really wish Eli Craig’s Clown in a Cornfield adaptation stuck to just being a goofy bloodbath because then I wouldn’t be forced to look deeper and watch it fall apart. I don’t know whether that’s his fault or novelist Adam Cesare’s since I never read the books, but I must wonder why a Millennial’s story so dead set on chastising Gen X and Boomers that it turns its climax into an overwrought and politicized exposition dump was directed by a Gen Xer and co-written by someone even older (screenwriter Carter Blanchard directed a short film in 1989, presumably while in college). Because this thing devolves quickly from low-stakes slasher to feeling like the “How Do You Do, Fellow Kids?” meme.

It starts off well. The 1991-set prologue dials up the horror clichés for laughs courtesy of hyperbolic stoners, sex-crazed coeds, and the line “What ****ing size shoe do you have?” coming out of a teen boy’s mouth after stepping into a clown-sized footprint in the mud while chasing after his half-naked girlfriend in a cornfield. The murderous clown honking with each step taken only adds to the silliness by setting the stage for a totally unserious ride into farce once we are smash cut into the present. The tone never quite spills over as far as I hoped, but cute gags like Quinn (Katie Douglas) telling her father (Aaron Abrams’ Dr. Maybrook) to stop playing 80s rap because that decade is as old to her as the 40s were to him in high school kept me going.

Then comes the selling point: Gen Zers going viral online with their own meta slashers that turn their sleepy, archaic town’s mascot Frendo the Clown into the killer we already know him to be three decades prior. Not only does this revelation make us pause when considering what it was we watched during the prologue, but it introduces a major culture clash of fun wherein the usual victims of these films are set-up to become impervious to the horror. Maybe Cole (Carson MacCormac), Janet (Cassandra Potenza), and the others heard tales of what happened in the past and sought to repurpose the stigma—to reclaim Frendo as their own. There’s potential for one of them to be the killer. Or for a survivor mad at their appropriation of their trauma to be the killer. Or for a brand-new killer to get inspired by them rather than the original Frendo.

I admittedly got excited. And that excitement only grew when the first kid falls pretty early on so more can follow in quick succession via some gnarly kills. While Craig (and presumably Cesare) realizes those possibilities exist and points us towards many before pulling the rug and heading a different direction, the actual endgame ultimately proves to be the most obvious and generic choice they could have made by comparison. Despite having all the tools to deliver something fresh and unique, Clown in a Cornfield supplies us the same “greater good” fascistic conspiracy shenanigans we’ve seen countless times before. I probably wouldn’t have minded as much if they leaned into the goofy a la Hot Fuzz when Edgar Wright did it, but the desire to remain “serious” sabotages the fun.

To lead into a mostly out-of-nowhere verbal blowout wherein Gen Z characters lay out everything their elders have done to ruin their future by digging in and refusing to overcome shortcomings out of fear of obsolescence once the world passed them by seems worthwhile on paper, but boy is the execution off. Maybe it’s the script’s “answer” dump rendering it clunky or the tone projecting a sarcastic air onto the message, but the whole’s unsettling nature that I couldn’t put my finger on finally came into focus and revealed itself to be a disingenuous undercurrent of older allies playacting today’s youth’s authentic rage. I’m sure Craig and Blanchard mean well, but this property needed filmmakers in their twenties or thirties behind the wheel rather than fifties and above.

And don’t tell me to simply ignore it. The film demands that I don’t. It wants to be more than just dumb fun, so I can’t ignore such a gross mismanagement of the dynamic between intent and execution. I wish I could because the film is enjoyable when you’re gliding along the surface. I wanted more from the choice of having the victims create content starring their soon-to-be murderer’s visage, but the gag we do get (not believing the real bloodshed is real at first) does hit its mark. Most of the best parts come via similarly brief record-scratch moments of realization or subversion, but they are frankly too few and far between since the film really thinks it has something pithy to say and hamstrings the comedy to maintain an unearned sense of gritty political commentary.

Kevin Durand as the resident descendant of the town’s founder and Will Sasso’s Sheriff add some nice duplicitous hick flavor while still having room to go over-the-top when necessary. Abrams is a great representation of that “older ally” balancing his duties as a parent and his understanding that the world is vastly different than from his childhood and he must adapt accordingly. Potenza, Verity Marks, Ayo Solankem, and Alexandre Martin Deakin are entertaining as caricatured stereotypes of everything their parents fear is “ruining society” and Douglas, MacCormac, and Vincent Muller provide the cooler heads needed as leads to cut through the chaos and propel the narrative forward. So, the pieces are there and the message is worthwhile. The voice used to put it all together is simply trying way too hard.

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Verity Marks, Cassandra Potenza, and Katie Douglas in Eli Craig’s CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD. Courtesy of RLJE Films & Shudder. An RLJE Films & Shudder Release.