"Clown in a Cornfield" Teaser Trailer: A Sinister Killer Clown Terrorizes a Small Town in New Horror Comedy From 'Tucker & Dale' Director Eli Craig
Eli Craig, director of 'Tucker & Dale vs. Evil,' brings horror and satire to this new darkly comic horror film featuring a killer clown and small-town chaos.
One of the key aspects of being a rabid horror movie fan is always scrounging for good scary movies to enjoy and to hopefully also recommend to others. Good horror comedies also come with the territory, but they are harder to find as most of them fall flat in the comedy department. However, if you've been scouring through most horror lists of underappreciated cult favorites from the last 15 years, there's usually one terrific horror comedy that keeps popping up as it has emerged as one of the best cult horror flicks to come out in the early 2010s:
It's a silly and subversive horror film that plays with the audience's knowledge of exploitation horror and cabin-in-the-woods slashers, while also playing with the one-sided stereotype of backwoods hillbillies. In the film, Tucker and Dale are a couple of backcountry hillbillies (played awesomely by Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine), but they're also a couple of friendly best buds trying to get by until a group of entitled college kids confuse them for being redneck murderers. Then all hell breaks loose in a series of unfortunate, and gruesome, events brought on by misunderstandings and misinterpretations. Seek it out if you haven't seen it yet, we're sure you'll get a kick out of it.
Now, why bring up Tucker and Dale vs. Evil?
Well, Eli Craig, the director behind that cult favorite, has returned with a new horror film that looks equally fun, silly, and horrifying. It's called Clown in a Cornfield, and just from that title alone, you can get a pretty good sense of just where the satire lies.
It's a clown-horror spoof where, in the sleepy and dying town of Kettle Springs, a sinister clown killer emerges from the cornfields, out to terrorize the community. At the center of the story is a daughter and father who have just moved into town, just in time to witness the carnage.
Featuring an ensemble cast that includes Katie Douglas (Ginny & Georgia), Carson MacCormac (Shazam!), Aaron Abrams (Blindspot), with comedian Will Sasso (MadTV) and the always reliable actor Kevin Durand (Abigail, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes), Clown in a Cornfield will be making its world premiere in a couple of weeks at the SXSW Film Festival on March 10th. The film will also officially be released in theaters on May 9th, followed by an exclusive streaming release on the horror platform Shudder later in the year.
In the meantime, you can check out the first teaser trailer, posted above.
Here's the film's official synopsis:
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. Based on the Bram Stoker Award-Winning Horror Novel by Adam Cesare.
