Clown in a Cornfield (2025)

Kettle Springs is a Missouri town that lost its corn syrup factory and, with it, its reason to be cheerful. Into this economic crater moves Quinn Maybrook, a teenager with a dead mother and a strained father, and a grinning corporate mascot named Frendo begins thinning the local youth. The film wants us to understand that the factory's collapse is the wound from which everything else bleeds, and the villains' grievances are framed around decline and resentment. That is a class critique of sorts, though it arrives muddled, more set dressing than argument. The shuttered plant is just enough scaffolding to hang a body on.

The casting is a largely white Canadian ensemble, and the only real gesture toward representation is a gay supporting character. Rust turns out to be Cole's ex-boyfriend, and the two share a kiss near the climax. Reviewers greeted this as a genuine surprise, and it is easily the film's most interesting swerve. It stays a subplot, a garnish on the blood. Quinn, meanwhile, dispatches several killers with pitchforks and cattle prods, which is standard slasher survival and nothing more. She is capable because the genre requires a survivor, not because the screenplay has an argument to make about women.

Where the film overreaches is its climax. The masked townsfolk remove their faces and deliver extended speeches about the town's troubles and the teens who ruined its image. Critics noticed. The explaining saps the chaos of its pleasure, and the message lands with a thud. There is no racial dimension here, no climate anxiety, no body politics, no neurodivergent reading, and no historical revisionism to speak of. What remains is a lean, gory, occasionally clever slasher that believes it has more on its mind than it does. A sequel is reportedly coming. The corn will grow back.