I have to hand it to Eli Roth. I’ve not liked a lot of his movies and think he’s way too full of himself a lot of times just like his one of his collaborators, Quentin Tarantino. But his 2023 movie Thanksgiving was a great ode to the 1980s slasher craze with some social commentary on consumerism and public decorum.
I’m sure it was filmed in Canada for more than the tax breaks but the nice look and film of those horror movies filmed in the Great White North throughout the 1980s and 1990s. That being said, another Eli, whose full name is Eli Craig, has a difficult task with an adaptation of a young adult novel of Clown in a Cornfield. And also this movie has the stink of the remnants of the atrocious Fear Street adaptations.
With the second generation of Scream movies, the slasher craze doesn’t wink too much at the camera as it once did. Yet, I found the Blumhouse movies along with the Smile movies have given horror a crisp, fresher sheen to put them more on par with bigger movies. They no longer have the B-movie look and feel of the horror genre in the 20th Century.
Still, part of the allure of the older horror movies, mainly the slashers was the cast consisting of up and comers who never get farther than a TV show canceled after six weeks. This movie works when it’s going overboard with violence and gore but loses interest when we discover the true reasons for the killings. I have to say Hot Fuzz did it better and had more fun with the premise. It’s hard to give out much of the details because there’s a twist in the movie I don’t want to give away even though it doesn’t work. Maybe it worked better in novel if it’s included but some things work better in the written word than on the screen.
The movie is set during the modern era in Kettle Spring, Mo. Well, it was actually filmed in the Winnipeg era, but you’d know that by the abundance of Canadian actors in the cast including Kevin Durand as the town’s mayor and Will Sasso as Sheriff Dunne, who blames everything on kids. The rural setting against the backdrop of the autumn season gives the movie a nice look thanks to the camera and production design crews.
Dr. Glenn Maybrook (Aaron Abrams) and his teen angst daughter, Quinn (Katie Douglas), move to the town. As in most horror stories, they’re grieving the lost of a family member, his wife and her mother. Quinn soon realizes her father isn’t the biggest dick she knows as the teacher assigns her to detention for being assigned to the wrong class and arriving late.
Since she’s the new girl, there’s some hostility I guess as Quinn befriends Cole Hill (Carson MacCormac), the son of the town mayor, and his friends. They tell Quinn about the myth of Frendo who was the mascot for the Baypen Corn Syrup factory that was in the area which burned down years before. The kids have been horror parodies online with Frendo masks, but they soon are stalked by a killer in a clown mask.
While the movie doesn’t have many thrills and chills, it does have some fun when Frendo is on the rampage, like I said. Yet the characters seem too one-dimensional that you never really care what happens to them, even Quinn and Glenn. Craig had this same problem with his first movie Tucker & Dale vs. Evil. Just like in a porno movie, the money shot scenes are the best but the frame storyline never draws much interest.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 