STACK #250 August 2025

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FEATURE MOVIE

5 OF THE CREEPIEST MOVIE CLOWNS!

Art the Clown from Terrifier

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the cornfield, there’s a chainsaw-wielding clown to contend with! Words Glenn Cochrane D irector Eli Craig knows the genre all too well, having gifted the horror community with his cult favourite FIELD OF SCREAMS GENRE: Horror Mystery RUN TIME: 1h 36m

Killer Klowns from Outer Space

Pennywise from IT (2017)

Pennywise from Stephen King's IT (1990)

The Clown Doll from Poltergeist

to a place where they feel sure of where the film’s going to go, and then not giving them that. I like to reverse those things and give them something totally different.” Observant horror fiends will no doubt catch some of the cheeky Easter eggs that Craig has hidden throughout the movie - some subtle, and some not so much. He's also proudly open about the many influences and homages he

Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil , and now he’s back to traumatise all the coulrophobes amongst us. Don’t reach for your dictionaries, coulrophobia is the fear of clowns, and if you suffer from this unfortunate affliction, then Clown in a Cornfield could lead to years of therapy. “I thought Clown in a Cornfield should balance this really gruesome actiony horror with light, levity, and comedy,” says Craig when he sat down to chat with STACK , and it’s a balance he’s managed to strike perfectly. Based on the popular teen novel by Adam Cesare, the story follows a father and daughter who move to a sleepy rural town following the sudden passing of his wife and her mother. The town is struggling after

popular book posed any challenges. “The main plot twist in the movie is also the plot twist in the book, and once I got to that moment, where it really shifts tone and shifts pacing, I thought, ‘Let’s take a big swing at this' and lean into the tropey horror. Really establish the characters and then make this pretty big tonal shift for the second half.” Eager slasher fans are in for a treat because Clown in a Cornfield exploits all of the best cliches and tropes while offering up something entirely new and unexpected.

enjoys paying. “I really wanted this to be like an '80s throwback slasher movie that felt gritty and special effects heavy, but not visual effects heavy, so all of those masked killer classics like, you know, Halloween , Friday the 13th , and Leatherface, of course. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is huge in my mind. “But then also, I looked to Scream and the meta elements there. And, of course, the

Eli Craig is the son of Hollywood legend Sally Field. DYK?

the closure of a local corn syrup factory and continues to honour the company’s mascot, Frendo the Clown. But there’s a killer on the loose, who’s trashing Frendo’s image by dressing as him and hacking up townsfolk, mostly the boozy teens who cure their smalltown boredom by creating social media content. go together,” he says when asked if adapting the “Exciting and challenging

master of them, because this is sort of a predator movie, but Jaws ! I have a little homage to Jaws in the beginning because to me the corn is kind of like the ocean. You can’t really see through it, and when you’re above it you see this long line but you don’t know what lives within it.” If Clown in a Cornfield is successful, and we hope that it is, then you can rest assured that there’ll be more. After all, there are three books in the series.

“I feel like the audience is another part of the plot,” he explains of his process. “Because I’m kind of plotting what I think the audience will think is happening next. So, I’m

trying to play with people’s emotions - and that’s what a lot of filmmaking is, right? You’re trying to manipulate people’s emotions. “And a lot of my manipulation is leading them