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Clown In A Cornfield sees Quinn (Katie Douglas) and her Dad, Glenn (Aaron Abrams – Hannibal), in a movie trope of moving to a new house in a new town and… it’s a complete dump.
Both the house AND town, in fact, with the local factory having burned down, and a question over with it was arson, but don’t worry, this is anything but a detective thriller to find out who did it, if anyone.
At school where Quinn has a teacher who’s an absolute wanker – giving everyone detention for the slighest aberration, the local teens make viral internet videos about being chased by a clown called Frendo, and the same one which used to be featured in an oddly-gory syrup commercial from the ’90s.
But after the town parade is set on fire by mistake, the teens get blamed, leading to old man Daryl (Blake Taylor) telling them in jail, “Never fuck with Frendo!”
As for Mr Taylor, his face looks like I should really know him from other films, but I can’t place him, and despite that line having been used in the trailer, he’s never seen again!
Clown In A Cornfield rather takes a while to get going – around the point where the teens think the clown’s cornfield arrival is someone playing a joke for another video until one gets killed by it – but when it does, it can be a bit too knowing, such as when Ronnie (Verity Marks) says (because’s she’s black), “It feels like we’re in an ’80s slasher movie in the corn… and I know I’ll be next!”
Plus, as Quinn and Janet (Cassandra Potenza) escape the clown in the middle of the night, they get to someone’s house, at which point Janet rings the doorbell…
Quinn: “Did you really just ring the doorbell?! I think we’re way past pleasantaries, Janet(!)”
However, the biggest laugh came from seeing this Gen Z pair wanting to call the police, but encounter a dial phone and can’t figure it out!
Alas, with everything in this being so formulaic, I’m surprised it was spawned from a novel. It passes 90 minutes without any major complaint, but if it hadn’t been made, you wouldn’t be clamouring for it.
Another alas: I figured, in advance, that Clown In A Cornfield would be one of those films which starts with a “30 years ago” scene, showing the clown murdering someone, then zooming ahead to the present. However, all I saw was Quinn & Dad arriving in town.
That’s the problem of two films being too close together, and I only sat through the long end credits of How To Train Your Dragon, because I knew there was a post-credit scene. As such, I missed the first 4 minutes of THIS film, during which there’s EXACTLY what I predicted…
I watch too many films.
Still, on catching up with it later, that first scene is set in 1991, with the song “What Do I Owe?” by Dummy, which Youtube tells me is from 2002. Still, it’s a track that could’ve come from that earlier year. You can listen to it below and let me know what you think!
As for the audience experience, Cinema etiquette has once again gone out the window! This time the problem was: putting feet up on the chair.
I’ve included an example picture of how the seating looked, which I put together afterwards, but in the same screen (No.2). I’m in C4, and there’s a couple behind me, in D6 and D7.
About 20 minutes into the film, I realised how tall the bloke (in D6) was, as I sensed something had changed (but didn’t hear at the time, due to the noise in the film), and found he’d angled himself, so his huge shoes were now on the back of the C5 chair, right next to my head.
I said politely, “Can you please move your feet to the right, a bit?”, knowing that he couldn’t physically put them on the seat in front of him. He could’ve angled them in front of his other half, or swapped places with her and angled his feet to the right, so they’re even further away… but he just sat uncomfortably, instead.
I would normally have sat in C5, given that’s the central column in there, but when there’s room to spread out a bit, I’d rather leave a 2-seat gap between me and someone else, even if I’ve ended up a bit off-centre (first world problems, of course). Maybe I should, as he would’ve struggled to put a foot through my head?
Overall as a film, though, Clown In A Cornfield is a typical below-average slasher flick. You’ve seen it all before, but there’s some fun murders, along with something I wasn’t expecting that was hidden from the trailer, so I won’t spoil here.
And for one of these murders, you can hear the clown shoes AFTER it kills someone, rather than before, so how he gets around being quiet, I’ll never know.
NOTE: There is NO mid- or post-credits scene.
Clown In A Cornfield is in cinemas now, and is available to pre-order on Blu-ray and DVD.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 96 minutes
Release date: June 6th 2025
Studio: 2.39:1
Cinema: Odeon Trafford Centre
Rating: 4/10
Director: Eli Craig
Producers: Marty Bowen, Terry Dougas, John Fischer, Wyck Godfrey, Paris Kassidokostas-Latsis, Isaac Klausner
Screenplay: Carter Blanchard, Eli Craig
Novel: Adam Cesare
Music: Brandon Roberts, Marcus Trumpp
Cast:
Quinn: Katie Douglas
Dr. Glenn Maybrook: Aaron Abrams
Cole: Carson MacCormac
Rust: Vincent Muller
Arthur Hill: Kevin Durand
Sheriff Dunne: Will Sasso
Janet: Cassandra Potenza
Ronnie: Verity Marks
Tucker: Ayo Solanke
Matt: Alexandre Martin Deakin
Crystal Hill: Catherine Wreford
Trudy: Daina Leitold
Otis: Jean-Jacques Javier
DJ: Noah Craig
Daryl: Blake Taylor
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.