‘Clown in a Cornfield’ Review: Woefully Derivative Slasher Movie with a ‘Hook’ — It’s Not One Killer Clown, It’s a Dozen

variety.com:

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic How basic and hipster dumb and derivative is the SXSW slasher movie “Clown in a Cornfield?” Like many a slasher film before it, the movie is trying to launch its own iconic masked killer.

But check out if any of this sounds overly familiar. The killer, named Friendo, wears the face of an evil leering clown, like Pennywise from “It,” topped by a small cocked hat like the one worn by Art the Clown in the “Terrifier” films.

Friendo does indeed dispatch many of his victims in a cornfield, which means that the film’s title is perhaps the most self-consciously literal piece of high-concept branding since “Snakes on a Plane.” “Clown in a Cornfield” is based on a YA novel, but before you assume it’s the “Stranger Things” of mayhem, what the pedigree comes down to is that the victims — a group of teenagers in the small-town farm community of Kettle Springs — are as one-note and disposable as the walking-meat teen slasher characters of the ’80s.

There’s a showpiece sequence set during a holiday parade down Main Street, featuring a mascot version of the killer, that’s a flagrant imitation of the one in “Thanksgiving.” And yet…”Clown in a Cornfield” isn’t quite so pandering as to presume that we’re unaware of all this.