When I first heard Clown in a Cornfield was being adapted into a movie, I was excited, even though I’ve never read the book. A killer clown in creepy small town? Teen slasher chaos? I was genuinely excited.
Directed by Eli Craig (Tucker and Dale vs. Evil), the story follows Quinn (played by Katie Douglas) and her dad as they move to the quiet, rural town of Kettle Springs after a tragedy. But the town is anything but peaceful. A divide between the younger and older generations is growing, and things only get worse when a masked clown starts picking people off one by one. It sounds like the perfect recipe for a gory, campy slasher. So is it a hit or a miss?
The opening scene is fun, but after that Clown in a Cornfield struggles to live up to the hype. It clearly wants to be a fun, over-the-top slasher like Thanksgiving (2023) or Fear Street: 1994 (2021), but it never fully commits. The humor falls flat, the jump scares are weak, and the gore is surprisingly tame. For a teen slasher movie about a killer clown, I expected a little more.
Now let’s talk about the clown. On paper, a grinning maniac stalking teens through cornfields should be terrifying. But here, the clown just isn’t scary. The mask design is basic, the kills lack impact, and the direction doesn’t build much suspense. I never got that fun, uneasy feeling that great clown horror movies (Terrifier, Hell House LLC Origins) are known for.
Aside from Katie Douglas’ character, who honestly carried the movie on her back as she brought way more depth and charm to her role than the script gives her, the rest of the characters just doesn’t leave much of an impression and I really don’t even remember their names. Katie was fantastic though and has real horror star potential, so I hope this leads to more genre roles for her.
I can see what the filmmakers were going for. They wanted a campy, throwback slasher with a modern edge. But the result felt corny in the wrong way. Not gory or funny enough to be memorable, not smart or scary enough to stand out.
Final Thoughts
Clown in a Cornfield had all the ingredients to be a fun addition to the teen slasher canon, but it just didn’t work for me. If you’re really craving a fun killer clown movie, I’d point you to IT, or Terrifier, which are both way more fun. And if you like whodunit slashers with a masked psychopath, there are many to choose from, but Thanksgiving and Heart Eyes are two of my recent favorites that did it so much better.
