Clown in a Cornfield

Directed by Eli Craig, Clown in a Cornfield details the carnage that ensues after a malevolent clown begins offing teenagers in a small town. It’s exceedingly, almost excessively familiar subject matter that’s employed to hit-and-miss yet basically entertaining effect by Craig, although the picture gets off to a fairly rough start with a distressingly generic opening stretch rife with hoary slasher-movie clichés and conventions – with the far-from-enthralling atmosphere compounded by a recurring emphasis on the tiresome exploits of one-note adolescent protagonists. There’s little doubt, then, that Clown in a Cornfield benefits from a handful of agreeably grotesque kill sequences and a supporting cast peppered with familiar faces (including Aaron Abrams, Will Sasso, and Kevin Durand), while it’s equally clear that the genuinely surprising twists and turns of the second half propel the proceedings through to its violent, larger-than-life finale – which does, in the end, confirm the picture’s place as a decent-enough genre effort that delivers when (and where) it counts.

**1/2 out of ****