Clown In A Cornfield (2025) – Friendo Loves You

Released: 8th May
Seen: 24th August

In 2020, Adam Cesare released the young adult novel Clown in a Cornfield. The novel was a big success, ending up winning the Bram Stoker Award for Best Young Adult Novel and pretty much instantly getting optioned for a film. There would end up being 2 more novels written in the Clown in a Cornfield series over the years but the film took a little while to get made (probably because 2020 was not exactly a great time to try and film a movie, what with all the COVID hanging around) but eventually a little film called Clown in a Cornfield came out and made a brief splash before getting eclipsed by Final Destination: Bloodlines… which is a shame because it’s the kind of movie that deserves a lot more love.

Clown in a Cornfield follows Quinn (Katie Douglas) who has just moved to the charming little town of Kettle Springs along with her father Dr Glenn (Aaron Abrams). She’s trying her best to adapt to her new home, making friends with the local kids, going out to the local social gatherings and even trying to take part in the annual Founders Day Festival. It’s going to take a little bit of time for her to adjust but Quinn’s already making some friends so things should be pretty easy… except for the fact that there’s a creepy-looking clown named Friendo who keeps popping up around the town and violently killing any random teenager that they can get their clowny hands on. Looks like Quinn and her gaggle of kill count statistic friends are going to have to work together to fuck up Friendo and save the town.

If you were to ask for the perfect representation for what a modern slasher movie is, Clown in a Cornfield makes a great case for being the ideal representation of that genre. It’s not even a little ashamed of what it is, it’s a film about a creepy looking clown who has a bunch of toys to play with and every one of those toys removes a bunch of flesh from the nearest teenager. Within 5 minutes of the film starting, it’s already making sure you know what you’re in for, big silly over the top deaths performed by a Clown who may or may not be in a cornfield. It does what it says it’s going to do, it does it well and it doesn’t stray from that clear objective. Characters are fleshed out exactly as much as they need to be to make it mean something when they take a chainsaw to the face, dialogue is either expository or the delightful cheese that this genre provides, it’s not breaking the mould even a little but it’s making sure to fill that mould as well as one can.

Every little element of Clown in a Cornfield is just well done, never pushing it so far to stand out that much but it does enough to make for a good fun time. The design of Friendo is instantly memorable and unique, which is pretty cool in a world where there’s just an endless supply of killer clown movies. The kills are brutal, effective and well filmed to almost the ideal length of time. Each performance is just silly enough to be entertaining but not so intense that they feel out of place (It’s a silly slasher film, no one’s pulling a Meryl Streep but it’s nice when they still show they can deliver a performance). It’s the kind of film where every element is set to the exact right degree of quality and all combined to make a film that is just hard to describe as anything other than “Good”. Does that mean it’s the best film of its kind? Fuck no, I don’t even think I’d say it was the best film about a killer clown that’d been released in the last couple of years but that’s partially because it’s trying so pointedly hard to play within the limitations of the mould.

OK, there are a few moments where Clown in a Cornfield does push hard enough on the edge of the mould that it feels like it’s breaking out, until you remember that this is 2025 and really everything here should just be standard. It shouldn’t feel like it’s special for there to be a couple of gay characters in a mainstream horror film in 2025, this should feel natural at this point (Hell, according to idiots like Snoop Dogg, it’s in every film) but because it is actually so rare to see it’s nice that not only are there queer characters, they’re well rounded and fun characters who just happen to be gay. It’s almost a perfect example of how to work those kinds of characters into a film, something that should happen more often.

The core message of Clown in a Cornfield (because yes, even a film like this has something to say) is all about the younger generation and the older generation not seeing eye to eye, which feels poignant right now. It’s subtle and largely played for a laugh but it’s nice to see a film tackling that kind of subject matter in a way that doesn’t feel condescending to either side. The young people in this movie can be annoying, the old people are set in their ways, it might take a side at the end based on the audience it’s aiming for but it doesn’t play that side as squeaky clean. It shows there’s not only core differences between generations that mean they have different issues to deal with but that sometimes it’s worth listening to them to get by.

Now all this having been said, the big problem with Clown in a Cornfield is the very thing I’ve been praising them for pretty much this whole time, it’s pretty much exactly what you expect. There is no real surprise, there’s nothing that’s going to change the game here. It’s exactly what you expected when you heard that there was a Slasher movie called Clown in a Cornfield. It’s not telling an interesting unique story, it’s not creating wild new character types we’ve never seen before, it’s not even so violent that it’s shocking (the violence in this movie is on part with any modern slasher, which is fine but we’re in a post Terrifier world and my bar for what fucked up shit Clowns can do has risen). It ticks all the boxes about as well as you could ask it to, which certainly makes it a good film and possibly the kind of film that could be used for an introduction to the genre for some people, but it’s not as truly transcendent as it could be.

Clown in a Cornfield is everything you would hope a film called Clown in a Cornfield would be. It’s fun, it’s silly, it has a good time with the audience and will almost certainly put a big silly smile on your face by the time it’s done as long as you’re into this genre of cinema. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but sometimes you don’t have to. Sometimes you just have to present what is standard in the genre as well as you can with enough of a sense of fun and enjoyment to make for a really great time, Now, please hurry up and adapt the two other books because Friendo is a really fun character design and I would like to see more of him on my screen sometime soon.