Clown in a Cornfield ★★½

IN 2010 a horror/comedy called Tucker and Dale vs Evil was released.

It had a nice little inventive angle with two hillbillies being mistaken for serial killers, through a series of unfortunate coincidences.

It was written and directed by a guy named Eli Craig who has done very little since then.

His third feature, Clown in a Cornfield, is another comedic horror effort, as the title suggests, but doesn’t have the same level of ingenuity or energy that Tucker and Dale vs Evil had.

Craig’s screenplay is based on a novel but doesn’t have the depth that type of source material would normally suggest. Perhaps it wasn’t much of a novel?

It’s set in 1991 in the small town of Kettle Springs, Missouri, where the new doctor has arrived with his teenage daughter Quinn reluctantly in tow.

As with many ‘final girls’ in horror films, Quinn’s mother has died and she and her father are struggling to cope and stay connected.

Quinn has a bit of a wild side and quickly befriends a group led by the son of the town’s mayor who regularly spend time drinking and filming horror videos at an abandoned corn syrup factory.

The subject of their videos is a serial killing clown named Frendo, based on the corn syrup company’s old mascot.

This set-up leads to the inevitable slasher film with Frendo running riot and slicing heads off teenagers in the cornfield.

It could be all very ordinary if not for a couple of decent twists in the narrative that lift proceedings considerably.

Watched at the cinema.