Parents' Guide to Clown in a Cornfield

This teen slasher movie is pretty generic for a long time before finally ramping things up and getting smarter, but the skillful filmmaking and likable characters balance things out. For almost an hour, it's hard to believe that Clown in a Cornfield was directed by Eli Craig, who made the genius horror parody Tucker & Dale vs. Evil. This movie is as blandly routine as that one was a sharp skewering of routine. There's even an opening sequence here that almost exactly matches the opening sequence of Jaws—but instead of a flirty teen girl beckoning a drunk teen boy into shark-infested waters, in Cornfield, a flirty teen girl beckons a drunk teen boy into a clown-infested cornfield. Viewers also get familiar scenes of teens being stalked, thinking it's their friends playing pranks (i.e., "C'mon, you guys! This isn't funny!").

But as things head toward the final act, the story—based on a YA novel by Adam Cesare—begins to let on what it's really about: destructive behavior disguised as conservative values. ("If you can't have things the way you want them, you'd rather burn it all to the ground!") In one delightful small detail, we learn that the teens use the town's corn syrup as fake blood for their videos. It's too bad that the movie as a whole couldn't have been cleverer or gone a bit deeper, but overall Clown in a Cornfield works well enough, like a pair of big, red squeaky shoes.