You Can Finally Stream “The best slasher of the year” And It’s Brutal
I love a good slasher movie. Ever since David Gordon Green resurrected Michael Myers for a new trilogy of Halloween films—some good, some not—studios have been pumping out one slasher after another. There’s always money in the slasher banana stand, it seems. Halloween grossed $259 million at the worldwide box office, after all.
Since then, we’ve had new Scream, new Saw, new I Know What You Did Last Summer, and so much more. Legacy sequels have been all the rage, but the fortuitous timing has also allowed burgeoning horror icons like Art the Clown to really take off. Netflix doubled down with their Fear Street series of films, and the likes of Thanksgiving and Heart Eyes have introduced new classics to the slasher canon. It’s a slasher renaissance, and luckily, one of the best this century just arrived on streaming. Adapted from Adam Cesare’s novel of the same name, you can finally catch Clown in a Cornfield streaming on Shudder now.
Per Shudder: Kettle Springs is a dying town until Frendo, a symbol of the town’s past success, decides that bloodshed is the only way to make Kettle Springs great again.
What I admired most about Clown in a Cornfield is how it simultaneously feels like a classic distillation of the slasher formula and something altogether fresh. Eschewing the meta modernity of most slashers this century, Clown in a Cornfield relishes in the tropes without conceding to them entirely. Which is to say, it’s pretty cool that Clown in a Cornfield isn’t set in the 1980s. No doubt, it will be one of my favorite horror movies of the year, largely because it balances the laughs and scares perfectly.
In our own review of Clown in a Cornfield from earlier this year, we called the film a “pitch-perfect teenage slasher,” adding, “Clown In A Cornfield is Scream for the digital era: a dark horror comedy unafraid of slaughtering its darlings in the name of skewering a collapsing society.” Which is to say nothing of star Katie Douglas, who I think has given one of the strongest performances in a slasher movie ever here. It’s good, gooey stuff, and if you missed it in theaters, now’s the perfect chance to invite Frendo into your life.
What do you think? Any plans to stream Clown in a Cornfield on Shudder? If you do, let me know what you think over on Twitter @Chadiscollins.
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