Are you a friend of Frendo?

Moving to Kettle Springs, Missouri deep in the heart of flyover country, Quinn Maybrook (Katie Douglas) feigns support for her dad Glenn (Aaron Abrams), letting him drag her off to a small town so he can be their new doctor. Quinn is willing to endure her senior year of high school as “the new girl” before fleeing to college, but she finds a promising distraction among the disreputable local teens led by bad boy Cole Hill (Carson MacCormac). The group amuses themselves slandering Baypen Brand Corn Syrup factory mascot “Frendo” as a down-to-clown serial killer to make slasher videos for social media. At the 100th Founder’s Day celebration — which Cole’s dad Arthur (Kevin Durand) is a proud sponsor of — the kids land in more hot water, but Quinn already suspects Frendo is more than a work of influencer fiction… and they all may be in very real danger.

Based on the young adult book series by Adam Cesare, the director of Tucker and Dale vs. Evil Eli Craig was tapped to adapt the modern throwback with screenwriter Carter Blanchard. There’s been a growing trend having horror films return to an R-rating, but it seems odd that a book series billed as YA would opt in if they’re targeting the fan base of the series. Then again, the first book is old enough that readers are already in their twenties, never mind getting to skip out on all the submissions to the rating board to ensure an acceptable PG-13 cut. Whether it’s Killer Klowns from Outer Space, Pennywise from Stephen King’s It, or most recently Art from Terrifier, are audiences prepped for a new clown who’s neither syrupy nor sweet?

Ensemble slashers like this tend to follow the tropes outlined in The Cabin In the Woods, but this plot eerily follows the bullet points of Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving, which itself was informed by his own fake film trailer made for the Tarantino and Rodriguez Grindhouse double-feature. Similarities aside, this clown has a secret weapon: Katie Douglas. Amazingly watchable and utterly comfortable as our presumed final girl Quinn, she’s already known for playing captives or characters in danger since she was nine… very much the opposite of what fell flat in the recent Until Dawn adaptation. Everything works while she’s on screen — and the teen tailies noticeably less so when she’s not — giving set-ups enough breathing room to be fun without sacrificing the gravitas of the kills. Subvert a few expectations, toss some raw meat to the horror fans, and you’ve got the makings of a good-enough drive-in midnight feature that already has two sequel books teed up for a film trilogy.

The author reportedly claimed he “wanted to do not so much a throwback slasher as an attempt at a modern slasher with modern themes,” sounding a lot like what Radio Silence’s Scream IV already did. However, an early scene in the film suggests a similar incident took place thirty years prior, yet no one recalls that it ever happened. When the Director in The Cabin in the Woods offers a reason why the college students are being ritualistically punished, she offers “For being young? It’s different in every culture.” With so much of Clown in a Cornfield either deliberately or incidentally borrowed from other films, the only unique twist suggested is interestingly specific: it’s the next generation’s turn to be punished for transgressing. For a film barely over ninety minutes that underutilizes their R-rating, something feels cut from the film and stitched back together as well as it could be, but that lack of “something” could be pulling the punch on this point.

On a ridiculously small budget, the film looks good and is interesting enough, mostly serving as a franchise setup for Frendo and a sizzle reel for Douglas. It also shouldn’t be lost on anyone the name of the book and the film sounds a deliberate working title, winking at the audience with the first thing anyone notices. A few of the reveals skew expectations (like waiting to see how Vincent Muller’s character Rust will show up again) and perhaps unfairly picking on Gen Z. Being this is IFC’s biggest release ever — tripling its under-a-million-dollar budget in a single weekend — old and new fans should watch the cornstalks for more Frendo coming soon.

Rated R for bloody horror violence, language throughout, teen drinking, and I had some dreams… they were 🎶 clowns in my cornfield, clowns in my cornfield 🎶 (with apologies to Carly Simon).

Three skull recommendation out of four.