CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD (2025) ** ½

After the death of her mother, a teenage girl named Quinn (Katie Douglas) moves to a rural farming community with her father (Aaron Abrams).  She quickly falls in with a group of friends who make YouTube videos depicting the local clown mascot, “Frendo” as a psycho killer.  Before long, a killer wearing the clown’s get-up begins picking off the friends one by one.  Things go from bad to worse when a veritable army of Frendos crash a teen party in a cornfield and set out to finish Quinn and her pals off for good. 

Clown in a Cornfield kind of plays like a variation on Thanksgiving, but with a clown instead of a pilgrim.  (There’s even a parade scene.)   Unfortunately, it’s one of those kinds of movies where every time it does something right, it inevitably makes a misstep.  Some viewers may be more forgiving than others.  It just depends on whether you’re willing to enjoy the highs and brush off the lows. 

Among the highlights is the fun opening scene which contains a nice little homage to Jaws, but… you know… in a cornfield instead of a beach.  The gore is solid too, which certainly is a plus.  We get a pretty good weightlifting kill, an arrow in the head, a chainsaw to the gut, a pitchfork to the stomach, head crushing, a cattle prod to the mouth, and a funny scene where some girls find a severed head and think it’s a prop for a YouTube video.  It also gets bonus points for the scene where the girls are unable to call for help because they don’t know how to use a rotary phone. 

It does seem a bit odd that it was based on a novel as nothing about it screams “literary adaptation” since it’s more or less just a riff on ‘80s slasher movies.  (The film thinks having a character say, “It’s like we’re in an ‘80s horror movie” lets it off the hook.)  The townsfolk conspiracy that fuels the clowns’ massacre is easily the weakest part, as it loses a lot of momentum in the third act when the killers begin over-explaining their motives.  

Douglas is solid in the lead, but the rest of her friends are rather grating.  The supporting cast of adults include Will Sasso as the sheriff and Kevin Durand as the sniveling mayor.  They’re pretty good, although they feel kind of underutilized.  At least Abrams manages to be likable in the thankless dad role. 

Overall, Clown in a Cornfield is an uneven horror flick that’s nearly saved by a good crop of kill scenes.