Latest news with #Cornfield
Yahoo
10-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'Clown in a Cornfield' director Eli Craig: Comedy isn't 'respected' in show business
Based on the novel by Adam Cesare, Clown in a Cornfield (now in theatres) has all the elements of a classic horror movie setup, including scared teens in a small town and a creepy clown. Directed by Eli Craig, starring Katie Douglas, Aaron Abrams, Carson MacCormac and Kevin Durand, it feels like we're leaning into the 1980s slash flick aesthetic. The story begins as Quinn (Katie Douglas) and her dad, played by Aaron Abrams, move to the small town of Kettle Springs. The community is facing a particularly hard time after the Baypen Corn Syrup factory burned down, which provided several jobs for the town's residents. When Quinn arrives she becomes friends with the local teen rebels who tell her the tale of Frendo the clown, the town mascot who's believed to haunt the cornfields surrounded the old corn syrup factory. But the threat of Frendo quickly becomes a very real fear. While Craig is largely known for his horror-comedy films, like Little Evil, he took Clown in a Cornfield as his opportunity to step into a more classic horror format. "I did have something to prove, I'm not gonna lie. I had something to prove to the world, because a lot of times people would be like, 'Oh, you just know how to do comedy,' and it's a belittling thing in show business," Craig told Yahoo. "Whereas I think it should be respected, because comedy is hard, but it's not [respected] in show business." "I've done this for a long time and I wanted to just take a bite out of horror and create a world, and have some big set pieces that are action-packed, really create the grittiness of a present day throwback, kind of '80s slasher movie. But then keep some of my tone, which has elements of comedy, where you give people a release valve after mayhem ... and destruction and horror." The first relationship that's really established in the film is between Quinn and her dad, with Douglas and Abrams dealing with father-teen daughter tensions after the death of Quinn's mother, which led to their move. Admittedly, sometimes Quinn can be quite rude to her dad, but there's also a lot of sarcasm between the two. "The chemistry came very naturally to us, because he honestly kind of reminds me of my own dad, and it's a sense of humour that I have with my own dad," Douglas said. "In the script, it's the two of them against the world. They're kind of all each other has at the moment where we meet them." "So it's obviously a very heavy, loaded situation, but I think those are some of my favourite scenes, because they also incorporate humour in a really raw way, in a really relatable way." Quinn also has a crush, Carson MacCormac's Cole, whose father, Arthur Hill (Kevin Durand), is the town's mayor. As we've seen in all of Durand's previous work, from Dark Angel to Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, he's just an actor that completely immerses himself, and the audience, into his character. "I'm really attracted to opportunities where I can just set myself free and just go and play something different than me, because I get bored with me easily," Durand said. "There was a spectrum that I got to cover with this and in a short amount of time. It was a lot of bang for my buck in terms of the time that I was allotted in there, and the amount of play that I got to involve myself in. ... It was a really great, big, delicious meal. I love that challenge of, when I get into my obsessive realm and I won't leave a room until it starts to really make sense and sink in to my body." But a significant question for Clown in a Cornfield is how did Craig craft his version of a creepy clown, starting with what was provided in Cesare's writing. "Clown horror is basically a genre now, which makes me feel good, because if there was only one other great clown horror movie then I'd feel like I was pitted just against that," Craig said. "But I wanted this to be a unique clown, and so Adam Cesare, who wrote the book, gave us a lot of that backstory where he's this mascot ... for the whole town and that the town loves Frendo, and he's everywhere." "The one job everybody has at the factory, those jobs are gone, the factory is burned and decimated, and the American dream has become an American nightmare. And so that's the evolution I wanted Frendo to have, that he was this happy-go-lucky guy that now looks like it's he's not so happy or lucky anymore. And now he's this sort of washed up, angry, no longer hopeful ... villain." There's an added element in Clown in a Cornfield that links to youth and social media. While yes, a killer clown is certainly the big terror, the concept of being focused on social media and YouTube popularity becomes an interesting element in this horror story. "I think a lot of the movie is about youth and a generational divide, and I think the characters really encapsulate ... what it feels like to be a youth right now, and all the anxiety that comes along with having social media, and all the anxiety that comes along with just living in today's world," Douglas said. "I'm definitely one of those people that wants to tell a story that doesn't involve social media and stays away from cell phones and all those things, but this was just a problem that I had to embrace, because it's so much a part of the story, and it's a part of what these kids do," Craig added. "I don't like it when it's a part of the backdrop, I like it when it's a part of the storyline. And in this case, it's a part of the storyline that then has a great reversal moment, and I could use it to kind of elevate some humour and some comedy about people not getting what really happens."
Forbes
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
‘Clown In A Cornfield' Reviews: Is Horror Comedy Making Critics Smile?
Frendo the Clown in "Clown in a Cornfield." Clown in a Cornfield — a horror comedy from Tucker & Dale vs. Evil director Eli Craig — is new in theaters. Rated R, Clown in a Cornfield opens in theaters nationwide on Friday. The official summary for the film reads, 'In Clown in a Cornfield, Quinn (Katie Douglas) and her father (Aaron Abrams) have just moved to the quiet town of Kettle Springs, hoping for a fresh start. Instead, she discovers a fractured community that has fallen on hard times after the treasured Baypen Corn Syrup Factory burned down. 'As the locals bicker amongst themselves and tensions boil over, a sinister, grinning figure emerges from the cornfields to cleanse the town of its burdens, one bloody victim at a time. Welcome to Kettle Springs. The real fun starts when Frendo the Clown comes out to play.' Clown in a Cornfield also stars Kevin Durand, Carson MacCormack, Cassandra Potenza, Verity Marks, Ayo Solanke, Vincent Muller and Will Sasso. Based on Adam Cesare's acclaimed book of the same name, the screenplay for Clown in a Cornfield was written by Craig and Carter Blanchard. As of Thursday, Clown in a Cornfield has earned an 84% 'fresh' rating from Rotten Tomatoes critics based on 73 reviews. The RT Critics Consensus for the film reads, 'Clown in a Cornfield doesn't reinvent the corn maze, but its clever insights, subversion of expectations and solid foundation help slash its way to the top.' The RT Popcornmeter score, which features verified user ratings, is still pending. Among the top critics on RT who gives Clown in a Cornfield a 'fresh' rating is The Wrap's Rafael Motomayor, who writes that the movie 'may not rewrite the rules of the genre, but it does deliver a lean, mean, fun killer clown movie with wide-audience appeal that speaks loudest to Gen Z.' Nick Schager of The Daily Beast also gives Clown in a Cornfield a 'fresh' rating, writing on RT, 'If its fondness for stock formulas and scares means that it's not shocking, it also knows how to play the hits — and, of course, to deliver on its promise of killer clowns in cornfields.' The San Francisco Chronicle's Mick LaSalle signs the praises of the director Eli Craig, writing in his review on RT, 'Craig is so in command of the movie's tone that he can have a character say, 'It's like we're stuck in some awful '80s slasher movie,' without diminishing the genuine terror of clowns in cornfields.' Among the top critics on RT who give Clown in a Cornfield a 'rotten' rating is Owen Gleiberman of Variety, who writes, 'The film, in its trivial way, exudes a dyspeptic downer vibe, the result of everyone in it being so testy and unpleasant.' Jake Wilson of The Sydney Morning Herald also gives Clown in a Cornfield a 'rotten' review, writing, 'There's nothing wrong with using a teen horror movie to comment on the generation gap, class relations and the decline of the US manufacturing sector. But it helps if the plot isn't so cluttered with half-realized ideas.' Barry Hertz of the Globe and Mail also gives the film a 'rotten' review on RT, writing, 'Clown in a Cornfield takes far too long to reveal its big conceit, which is itself neither especially clever nor subversive. The whole idea represents a spurt of fresh blood when it should be a gushing geyser.' Clown in a Cornfield opens in theaters nationwide on Friday.
Forbes
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
‘Clown In A Cornfield' Director On Horror Comedy's Catchy Title And Why He Avoided The ‘Terrifier' Route
Scene from "Clown in a Cornfield." RLJE Films/Shudder When Clown in a Cornfield director Eli Craig first heard the title for what his next movie could potentially be, he immediately fell in love with it. After all, it's not too often that a title alone for a film yields so much potential — think Snakes on a Plane or Sharknado — but given the source material was already established as a beloved book, Clown in a Cornfield was too cool of a crop not to be picked. 'I saw the title and I was like 'I got to make this movie, and I hope that I hope the book is something I want to make,' Craig told me in a recent Zoom conversation. 'The title alone to me captures the spirit of something … It has so many layers to it. It has everything horror and funny, and of course, a clown.' While Clown in a Cornfield is a blood-splattered R-rated comedy, the story originated from author Adam Cesare's Bram Stoker Award-winning young adult novel from 2020. And while the book was written for YA readers, it didn't preclude Craig from amping up the scares for laughs. 'I always believed that the R-rated films I saw as a young adult affected me forever,' recalled Craig, whose mother is legendary screen star Sally Field. 'I remember the first horror films I ever saw vividly. They made me want to be a horror film director someday.' And quite the horror filmmaker Craig has become, with credits including the 2017 Netflix horror comedy Little Evil with Adam Scott and Evangeline Lilly, and the 2010 horror comedy cult classic Tucker and Dave vs. Evil, starring Tyler Labine and Alan Tudyk. When it came to Clown in a Cornfield, Craig said he wasn't about to change the way he makes his horror comedies because the source material originated as a YA novel. 'You can't give young people too little credit for their sophistication, and I didn't want to talk down to Gen Z at all [with this movie] Playing in Thursday previews ahead of opening in theater nationwide on Friday, Clown in a Cornfield stars Katie Douglas as Quinn Maybrook, a teen who moves with her doctor father, Glenn, move to the sleepy farm town of Kettle Springs to start anew and try to heal the fraught relationship following the death of Quinn's mother. What Quinn and Glenn don't realize is that Kettle Springs is going through tough times after the town's lifeblood industry — the Baypen Corn Syrup Factory — has burned to the ground, leaving the community in a lurch. In a bid to ease the town of its depressed state, the Baypen Corn Syrup Mascot — Frendo the Clown — has turned into a demented soul and is emerging from the rural cornfields to dispatch his victims in a particularly cruel ways, and Quinn and her new friends in Kettle Springs are in Frendo's line of sight. Of course, having a clown in Clown in a Cornfield automatically makes the film creepy, especially in the wake of the IT movies' Pennywise the Clown and Art the Clown from the Terrifier movies. The big difference, though, is while yes, there's ample amounts of blood and gore in Clown in a Cornfield, Eli Craig — who co-wrote the screen adaptation of Adam Cesare's book along with Carter Blanchard — didn't want the film to cross the line into Terrifier movie territory and have audiences vomiting in theater aisle. 'My gut is the line and sometimes I go to the point where I feel like I'm testing my own gut, where I can't really watch something myself,' Craig explained. With Terrifier 3, I had to watch the film in little segments to study it and I realized, 'Oh wow, Damien Leone is a master.' I wanted to look at how he was doing in-camera special effects. [At the same time] That's not to say Craig doesn't push the line with his blood and gore in Clown in a Cornfield. It's just that when he does, the kills are imbued with sights that can't help but make you laugh. 'I feel like I've hit the mark where most people are going to go, 'Ooh!' and start turning away, but then I'm done,' Craig said. 'I have these moments that may be a little shocking, but there's just a touch of humor in it as well that makes it tolerable. 'I want to have the kills be quite real and a little bit shocking, gritty and brutal, but also have a touch of playfulness to them,' the director added. 'They're not brutal to the point of being sickening, though. That's the line for me. I'm not interested in making a sickening movie. I want to make a fun movie that has kills in it.' Scene from "Clown in a Cornfield." RLJE Films/Shudder Masks, of course, have defined so many evil villains throughout horror film history, whether it be Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Michael Myers in the Halloween movies and Ghostface in the Scream franchise. As such, Eli Craig worked in close collaboration with his special makeup effects designer Doug Morrow and the film's producers to create a creepy Frendo the Clown mask that audiences wouldn't forget. 'The design goes way back to trying to figure out what this clown would look like in a commercial for the Kettle Springs corn syrup factory,' Craig recalled. 'He was like a Ronald McDonald in the 30s or 40s, like a salesman. The idea was to first represent the optimism of America, which then dissipated into this darkness, which shifted, melted and distorted into an evil-looking clown. 'So we took the features of like the joyful salesman clown with the eyes and then warped it a little bit and brought the smile up a little more with these awful-looking teeth,' Craig added. 'That's when we nailed it. When we finally got it, we were like, 'Okay, that's it. Let's print that. Let's make that mask. It's quite frightening.' With any luck, audiences are going to be freaked out by Frendo the Clown when the film opens in theaters this weekend and the masked creeper will be back to (corn) stalk and slay some more in a sequel or sequels to Clown in a Cornfield. After all, Clown in a Cornfield is just the first of three books by Adam Cesare, which is followed by Clown in a Cornfield 2: Frendo Lives, which was published in 2022 and The Church of Frendo, which was released in 2024. Going back to the idea of a movie title meaning everything, I shared my idea with Craig for a potential sequel for the next Frendo film: Clown in a Cornfield: Field of Screams. 'I'm writing it down. Do I have to give you credit?' Craig answered me with a laugh. 'I actually genuinely like that. Right now it's called Frendo Lives, but Field of Screams is pretty rad … thanks for that, Tim!' Also starring Kevin Durand, Carson MacCormack, Cassandra Potenza, Verity Marks, Ayo Solanke, Vincent Muller and Will Sasso, Clown in a Cornfield plays in Thursday previews before opening in theaters nationwide on Friday.
