Quick Synopsis: Some kind of circus worker (can’t remember the specifics) kills teens in a rural setting of some sort.

Fun fact: this was the 100th new movie I’ve seen this year, beating my previous record by roughly 11. It kind of sucks that such a momentous occasion is being marked with a film so bland that even a local cheap chicken shop wouldn’t sell it. It says a lot that the most memorable thing from this film is that you can sing the title to the same tune as Goldfinger’s cover of Man In A Suitcase. Also, I kept spelling it Cornfrield for some reason. If this movie were a colour, it would be mud-brown.

For Clown In A Cornfield (CIAC, pronounced Sigh-ack) to work, it needs to do one of two things: either be ridiculous and weird, or be brutal beyond belief. This does neither. It’s rated 15 in the UK, and it feels like it’s towards the lower end of that rating. The kills, even the most violent ones, feel remarkably pain-free. None of them really sticks in my mind. The opening two in particular feel neutered. One is offscreen, and the other one breaks physics. The clown approaches the future victim while they’re lying on the floor, then does a sideways sweep (like a hockey player making a quick pass), it then cuts to the person being lifted up on the weapon high up above the clown’s head.

The actual script isn’t too impressive either. Seinfeld famously described itself as “a show about nothing”, CIAC takes it to the next step by having nothing happen. The background characters are so underwritten that they might as well be cameos, so when the film shows us that there are multiple killers (I don’t count as a spoiler as it occurs before the halfway point,) it’s not difficult to see how the unmasking is going to go. The iconography of Frendo is so underbaked that I’m pretty sure it gave me salmonella. It doesn’t feel like “this has haunted the town for years”, or even a recent urban legend. The main characters use the idea that Frendo is a killer as a joke in a YouTube video. Also, for most of the deaths, the clown is only seen by the person they kill; so why dress as a clown in the first place? It’s unfair to single out CIAC for that, as SOOOO many slashers make the same mistake, to the point where I was actually impressed when Heart Eyes provided a good reason for the characters’ “fame”.

I don’t want to spoil the ending, but it’s basically Hot Fuzz, only we’re expected to take it seriously. I think we are, anyway. By all logic, this should be comedic, and there are times where it feels like it’s trying to be one, but it’s like being headbutted by a teletubby; incredibly po-faced. It’s weird as Eli Craig also directed Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil, which got the comedy/horror balance spot on. Here, it feels like it didn’t do enough to satisfy either genre.

On the upside, there are some musical choices. And there are some surprisingly subversive choices made with the main characters. It’s nowhere near as bad as I’ve made it sound. I doubt it will be in the bottom half of my movie rankings this year. There’s not much offensively awful about it, but there’s absolutely nothing worth highlighting. It’s mediocre, and in some ways, I find that more offensive than being bad.