Killer Klowns in a Kornfield
The theater was my Final Destination last night.
I went to high school in a town called East Bend, North Carolina. East Bend has six hundred thirty four people, one of the numerous small towns in Yadkin County, North Carolina. Yadkin County has just under thirty eight thousand people in it as of 2024.
Yadkinville, the heart and soul of Yadkin county, has just over three thousand people. I, technically, lived in Yadkinville, even though I drove past my high school to get into the bustling metropolis. A town and county that are predominantly white, although the hispanic population does reach does make-up a double digit percentage of the overall.
White people, living white people lives. Most of them seemed content to live out their lives in their white people bubble, glorifying days gone past when things would have been better for them. When America was great. In places like Yadkinville, the ground was ripe and fertile waiting for MAGA seeds to blossom into full blown fascism.
The plantation homes still stand, the racial demographics tell you what you need to know about the culture. The white people there still don’t want to do the work. Farming is a way of life there still along with a UNIFI textile plant. I met one of my best friends and brothers there, we are still bound together to this day.
Four years of my life were spent in that environment and then fits and spurts when I would go home to visit. Yadkinville taught me a lot of things but most importantly it taught me who I didn’t want to be.
I was racist and misogynistic, just like my peers. Homophobic too. I didn’t know how racist I was, I would have scoffed at that label in my teenage years. I had to unlearn it. Rural communities like this encourage their children to dehumanize their peers. It’s baked in to the world. You get it as school, at friend’s houses and always at the Church.
One of the best gifts Yadkinville gave me was freedom from the church. My parents had made me go on Sunday mornings until we moved out there. We went to a bunch of different churches and got the same messsage. Gay people aren’t real people. They deserve their pain and misery. They are wanton sinners.
I told my parents I wasn’t okay with that. They tried to find a church without that message and couldn’t. I no longer had to attend. And, I still used slurs against gay people. Homophobia was baked into me. I openly hated women, I thought it made me provacative. It just made me a miserable asshole. Especially since I had so many girls that were my friends, who supported and cared for me. They just didn’t call me out on it because in Yadkinville, North Carolina, hating women is a way of life.
In college, I found people who would hold me accountable for my bullshit. I already hated myself and accountability didn’t help. So I drank to avoid confronting who I really was. And then, I took some time to think about who I wanted to be. I listened to the people in my life, learned to appreciate the non-men as people and not props in my life.
I could sit here and pretend that I wasn’t that broken, but it would be a lie. Women were sexual objects, toys to coveted. Why would I think any different? The world told me that was the way of things and who was I to defy the world? Every day I learn something new, some way that my worldview was twisted by other broken people. Ways that my vulnerability was exploited. Ways that I had to be different going forward if I didn’t want to be the person I was.
So, when I signed up for a double feature yesterday, I didn’t know what I was in for. I’d heard good things about Final Destination: Bloodlines, the first FD movie I’ve seen in full since the original. Clowns in a Cornfield hadn’t drawn the same critical acclaim, but was from Eli Craig, the director of Tucker and Dale vs Evil. Sold. If you want to see both of them with as little information as possible, stop reading here. I’ll spoil you on this, they are worth seeing.
For two movies that have so much in common, it was wild to me how stark the differences were and how that shaped my viewing experience.
The original Final Destination is one of my favorite horror movies of all time. Funny, gripping and so creative, it pushed back against so many slasher horror cliches. 2012’s It Follows was the only follow up I had allowed into my life, even if the two movies have no connection.
I can’t speak to any of the four movies between here and the original, but the feedback I’ve gotten has been pretty consistent. They mined the concept until it was dead, with worse returns every time. Bloodlines felt like a call to It Follows response.
Both movies deal with dread and anxiety in a alternate world that is so close to ours it feels almost real. FD:B continues the legacy of Death Incarnate making sure his plans are not waylaid. The cinematography is excellent in an opening dream sequence that is one of the best big budget horror scenes I’ve seen in a long time.
The nightmare, where a young woman sees the Skyline Diner (a cross between the Space Needle and the Restaurant on Top of the World) come crashing down because an entitled child continued to ignore the safety of others. We realize it is a dream when that woman’s grandchild wakes up screaming in class. And every night in bed for months. She’s in danger of losing her scholarship and flunking out of school.
So, Stefani Reyes (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) goes on a quest to learn about her grandmother Iris (Brec Bassinger/Gabrielle Rose). A woman who could see death coming via premonitions. Premonitions that people didn’t believe, except for the lives she saved when she warned everyone in that death trap of the dangers that were to come. She was taken away by the police, but some people knew the truth.
The movie walks a fine line but it pays off for me. Helped, in large part, because this was a comedy first and a horror movie second. It is very funny. This movie never takes itself too seriously, even to the last frame (which I will not spoil for you). But, it does have a heart. Central themes fought for control of the film and I worried that their wrestling would be its undoing.
At times, it weakened the film, leaving me questioning what they were trying to tell me with this story. What was the point of it all? Two themes that warred almost the entire runtime was that of believing women and that anxiety about death can close you off from your world. Iris cares, too much. She sees death around every corner and is so obsessed with it that her family falls apart after the death of her husband Paul (Max Lloyd-Jones). Most don’t believe her, even though in this world, she is right.
The touches are what makes this movie work for me, the little grounding moments that show you the path forward. When Julia Campbell meets a horrific demise because no one listened to Stefani when she tried to warn them, her brother notes that his sister noticed all the warning signs and no one would listen.
At an earlier point, a backyard massace is about to ensue and Stefani’s estranged mother Darlene (Rya Kihlstedt) notices a rake under the trampoline. Death is around every corner, but if we are observant we can protect ourselves from the obvious dangers. Darlene twice endangers her nephew Bobby (Owen Patrick Joyner) with peanut butter being saved by older half-brother Erik (the always excellent Richard Harmon).
The movie also cautions you against letting that anxiety become obsession. Iris is a woman broken by grief and paranoia. She is so entrenched in her beliefs that she drives everyone away. Death will come for you when it is ready and there is nothing you can do but enjoy the time that you have. The movie tells you not to embrace death but to accept it. It was touching and sweet, but also laugh out loud funny. It lacked the freshness of the original, but I am glad it was made and that I saw it.
I found it excellent inspite of the blockbuster movie tropes that dragged the film out. There is a moment in the middle of the film where Stefani explains everything just in case you missed something. I understand why they included that moment, but it makes the movie a little too long and kills the pacing. I would love a director’s cut with that scene gone.
Clown in a Cornfield, on the other hand, was made for one million bucks. I only knew one actor from Bloodlines, here I double that with Will Sasso as the town’s sheriff and Kevin Durand as the town oligarch. I went in expecting a lighthearted comedy, something along the lines of the movie I had just seen. Some graphic kills in ridiculous ways and charming goofball heroes, like Craig’s previous work Tucker and Dale.
Whew.
This was a horror movie that sometimes made me laugh.
Set in the small town of Kettle Springs, Missouri, the film opens with two stoners getting slaughtered in 1991 while Dummy’s “What Do I Owe?” played in the background. I am not one to complain about anachrony in film, but it did catch me off guard as the record that song is on didn’t come out until 2002. The band didn’t even meet start until ‘95.
The song sounds so much like the nineties that I think people will fully believe it was released over a decade earlier. I found Dummy through the third season of Daredevil, a criminally overlooked band that I am glad continues to find an audience. The record is a masterpiece. I would have preferred they use “A Place to Call My Own” for thematic reasons, but I digress.
The movie picks up in 2025, where Quinn (Katie Douglas) and her father Glenn (Aaron Abrams) are moving into the old doctor’s house. He’s the new town doc, mom is out of the picture (from a fatal drug overdose we later learn) who pawns his daughter off to the first guy that knocks on their door. Rust Vance (Vincent Muller) warns Quinn that there are weird people in this town and she should be careful.
Quinn falls in with a group of outcasts, kids the town hates because they are different. The group makes short films mocking local company Baypen Corn Syrup’s mascot Frendo. They are popular kids at school, attractive and rich, but also outcasts for not buying into the small town propaganda. They mock what is sacred.
They are also accused of burning down the Baypen factory when they were shooting one of their videos there. Turns out it was faulty wiring, but no one really believes that. Not even the kids themselves. When Quinn notices the clown in the background of one of their videos, Frendo extracts his revenge.
The kids are slaughtered for not worshiping Frendo. The factory burning down put a lot of people out of work. People that relied on Cole Hill (Carson MacCormac) and his family. Cole’s father Arthur (Durand) is the current head of the Baypen empire. Cole’s younger sister has also passed away and in a touching scene where Quinn and Cole connect you can see that he isn’t sure if her death wasn’t his fault. MacCormac does such a great job of conveying self-doubt that you find yourself unsure if he is telling the truth.
When the inevitable reveal comes, that the Clowns tormening the children were the townspeople who also tormented them without the make up, I felt like I was back in Yadkin County, North Carolina. The snarky waitress, the teacher that harassed the students and the local police. The people that want you to respect the order of things. The traditions.
If you grew up in a rural area, you know Klanspeople. You might in the city, but you definitely do in the country. You know them with their masks on or their masks off. The way they take care of their own, but how they do not see other people as human beings. The way empathy is stripped away from them and the violence it perpetuates.
Frendo is a stand-in for the church, sure. And Durand is amazing as an Elon Musk stand-in. When he shows up in Ceser Romero-era Joker face paint at the end of the movie, I cackled. It was such a great multi-layered joke, mocking out of touch “business leaders” with an outdated take on an outdated edgelord meme.
The other thing that separates Craig’s work is how he humanizes people in the fly-over states. They aren’t perfect, but they are human beings. He doesn’t put people into boxes or archetypes, he molds those archetypes onto real people. This movie hit me in a way few movies can. It reminded me of the great times I had in the worst cultures this country produces, with people who I made connections with in spite of the world.
I’ve seen reviews where people strip this film of it’s political commentary, I think it is the only way some people can consume media. But this is a very political film. It is a cry for change. It is a movie that will resonate throughout time, but hopefully a better world than today.
Maybe the best message in the film is delivered near the end, Quinn is headed off to college and she teases her father that she doesn’t listen to old people. To which he replies “Fair…well at least old clowns that are trying to kill you.” These old clowns are here and they are stiffling voices and killing you. When we find out Arthur hill is actually the one who burned down the factory, no one cares.
The townsfolk are still willing to die for him. Because it is tradition. And when everything goes sideways and the townfolks are beaten back by the surviving kids and the adults who listen, Arthur escapes with no repercussions. Asking the question, why do we keep letting them get away with it?