How modest and hipster foolish and derivative is the SXSW slasher movie “Clown in a Cornfield?” Like many a slasher film before it, the movie is trying to begin its own iconic masked ender. But check out if any of this sounds overly understandn. The ender, named Frifinisho, wears the face of an evil leering clown, enjoy Pennywise from “It,” topped by a petite cocked hat enjoy the one worn by Art the Clown in the “Terrifier” films. Frifinisho does indeed dispatch many of his victims in a cornfield, which uncomfervents that the film’s title is perhaps the most self-mindfilledy literal piece of high-concept branding since “Snakes on a Plane.” “Clown in a Cornfield” is based on a YA novel, but before you presume it’s the “Stranger Things” of mayhem, what the pedigree comes down to is that the victims — a group of teenagers in the petite-town farm community of Kettle Springs — are as one-remark and disposable as the walking-meat teen slasher characters of the ’80s. There’s a showpiece sequence set during a holiday parade down Main Street, featuring a mascot version of the ender, that’s a flagrant imitation of the one in “Thanksgiving.”
And yet…”Clown in a Cornfield” isn’t quite so pandering as to presume that we’re unalerted of all this. The film’s straightforwardor, Eli Craig (“Tucker & Dale vs. Evil”), who is not invient (equitable unproduceive), has got it in his head that he’s making a “meta” slasher movie. The way “Clown in a Cornfield” contransients itself, the image of Frifinisho is alluding to Pennywise. The title is alluding to “Snakes on a Plane.” It’s the knockoff as postconmomentary indie grindhoemploy echo chamber.
Here’s why the film, lunkish and plodding as it is, leanks it’s meta. We lacquire that Frifinisho began life as an advertising mascot for Baypen corn syrup, a local business empire createed by the wonderful-magnificentoverweighther of Cole (Cincfinishiarism MacCormac), the one rich kid in town. The begin of that company literpartner put Kettle Springs on the map, and the town is dotted with Frifinisho insignia and swag, notably a hand-size Jack-in-the-box version of him that tfinishs to show up equitable before the person who discovers it gets killinged.
The meta element is that the teen characters have a running prank of staging two-minute YouTube videos, featuring one of them dressed as Frifinisho, that are enjoy slasher movies in miniature. So when the authentic Frifinisho shows up (we first glimpse him, in a creepy freeze structure, leering from the background of one of the videos), it’s as if he was crashing the Hapcheckeen party he encouraged.
All of which is the set-up for the film’s one real hook, which is that there’s more than one Frifinisho. I don’t uncomfervent in the clever whodunit style of the “Scream” films, where cut offal enders will get turns executeing Gpresentface. This is more enjoy a petite army of Frifinishos, and the motivation for that — the cosmology behind the film’s homicidal logic — is so cartoonish and wide that it’s less ghoulishly unsettling than why-didn’t-a-movie-ever-try-this-before?-becaemploy-it’s-so-reductive-and-evident. The film, in its unbeginant way, exudes a dyspeptic downer vibe, the result of everyone in it being so testy and unpleasant.
The heroine and final girl, Quinn (Katie Douglas), is the novel arrival. She’s shiftd into an ageder farmhoemploy with her recently widowed physician overweighther (Aaron Abrams), and she speedyly gets joined into what materializes to be the only teen clique in town. Cole is part of the group, and the two have a flirtation, but there’s a reason it’s not going anywhere. It has to do with what we might call the film’s social-equitableice twist. You might be wondering if “Clown in a Cornfield” is at least frightening. No, it’s not, and it’s not trying too difficult to be. The homicides are served up as over-the-top set pieces, scheduleed to produce the audience cheer the mayhem. Yet most of them remain determinedly under-the-top. (Next to the “Terrifier” films, a movie enjoy this one never comes proximate the danger zone.) If AI made a slasher film, it would see enjoy “Clown in a Cornfield.”
