Eli Craig on Generational Culture Clash of Clown in a Cornfield

Eli Craig on the Generational Culture Clash of New Slasher Clown in a Cornfield

The perennial clash between kids (by which we mean teens) and adults has always been the stuff of horror movie fodder, particularly in the slasher genre. Go all the way back to John Carpenter’s Halloween in 1978, and how helpful exactly are the most prominent adult figures? Laurie Strode’s parents are in the film for about 10 seconds. Her friend Annie Brackett’s father is the sheriff, and that doesn’t stop her from being murdered by Michael Myers. The one adult indisputably on the side of the “punk kids” is Dr. Loomis, who has no relation to any of them, nor meets them until the final moments. Adults in these movies are so often typified by a resentment of the local youth, a feeling that the latest generation has become corrupt and shiftless. In our own society, this gulf feels like perhaps it’s never been wider–and that’s exactly the feeling that director Eli Craig’s new horror film intends to exploit. That, and a killer Clown in a Cornfield, of course.

Craig is of course the man who brought us the beloved indie horror comedy Tucker & Dale vs. Evil in 2010, a film that has gone on to be effectively enshrined in the horror comedy hall of fame–we included it in our list of the best date night horror movies for a reason. In 2017, Craig likewise directed the Adam Scott-starring Little Evil for Netflix, continuing his horror comedy run. Now he’s tackling Clown in a Cornfield, the amusingly specific-titled adaptation of a 2020 young adult horror novel of the same name from author Adam Cesare. It’s a story about a teenage girl who moves to a rural town with her grieving father, only to find that the city’s economic downturn has coincided with the arrival of an avenging figure targeting her new high school friend circle: Frendo the Clown, the corporate mascot of the now destitute company that once kept the town’s economic engine humming.

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Clown in a Cornfield represents a broader commercial step for Craig as a director, less specifically a “horror comedy” and more an embrace of classic ‘80s slasher aesthetics, coupled with a story that touches on numerous aspects of the cultural divide between the Boomer, millennial and Gen Z cohorts. We sat down with the director for a conversation on crafting the new horror film, which arrives in U.S. theaters on May 9, 2025.

Paste Magazine: So, Clown in a Cornfield. That’s definitely one of those titles, where when I first saw it I thought it was a gag. It sounds like it could be an Asylum title or something. Were you skeptical at all, when you first saw it?

Eli Craig: Well I think my first reaction was like, “Hmmm, that poster would sit nicely next to Tucker & Dale vs. Evil.” There’s something I love about a title like that, which feels like a gag, because it sort of sets the bar of expectation low to begin with. And then you get to soar over that bar. I think Tucker & Dale sort of did the same thing, where it feels a little silly. And of course Tucker & Dale is very broad, sort of theater of the absurd, but it has deeper themes that stay with people. Clown in a Cornfield is similar, where it feels like it’s going to be very silly, and although there are some silly moments it’s actually a fairly straightforward, organic, authentic film that just has this element of total absurdity in it, in the form of this killer clown.

Paste: My favorite element of it ended up being Katie Douglas (as protagonist Quinn), who I wasn’t really familiar with at all before this. You expect this type of character to have the tragic backstory as an archetype, but I really enjoyed how warm and sort of self-assured and assertive the character is. Was that a characteristic that made her specifically stand out to you?

Craig: Absolutely, 100%. There’s this strength to her. She’s such a dichotomy of a person, there’s so much going on within her. And she’s very, very small to start with, she’s a petite girl …

Paste: The bit with her walking next to Rust in the beginning is kind of absurd for that reason, he’s so big and she’s so tiny.

Craig: Well it makes you immediately feel like she’s quite the underdog, which is what I wanted this film to have, and yet she has this inner strength to her as well. I really studied her acting before hiring her, and she had this bravado you don’t expect. She seems like a snarky teenager, but also really grounded in herself. So all those things, along with being tiny but having a bigger than life personality, were these dichotomies that I thought really fit the character of Quinn Maybrook, and fit the idea of a final girl. I wanted to create a final girl where we didn’t really go through this “sad, weak part,” where she’s going to cry and not be able to handle it.

Paste: It’s quite unlike the typical, sullen “new girl in town” archetype who doesn’t believe she can make friends and fit in.

Craig: I wanted this character to be strong. She’s there for dad, and it’s almost like he’s the weaker one, even though he ends up being a hero too. She’s there to support him, though she’s also rebelling from him. I’ll go back to a very different film, a film I love, in The Shining. I didn’t want this character to be sort of melting down, shrinking and terrified like that. I wanted her to be rising up and fighting back.

Of course there is still an arc as well; she gets stronger over the course of the film, and she’ll get stronger still if we have more time to develop her.

Paste: Don’t worry, we’ll talk about sequels. But first I want to ask about the theme of the generational clash in Clown in a Cornfield. You’re sort of solidly in the middle of Gen X, which feels like sort of the forgotten American generation at this point. Do you have sympathy for both sides of that divide in this film, or are you fully throwing yourself behind the kids?

Craig: I think in some ways I do relate to both sides … although I don’t necessarily relate to the absurd clown killing teenagers. But I do like to think I understand where he comes from. I try to understand all the vantage points.

Like, when I made Tucker & Dale, I made this whole, 30-minute standalone movie that is on the DVD that is Tucker & Dale just from the kids’ perspective, that is literally called Tucker & Dale Are Evil. Because from their POV, these guys we know are misunderstood do look completely evil. So whenever I’m telling a story with an antagonist, I do want to see the movie from their point of view as well. If you did see the kids in the film only from the perspective of the adults, they would seem pretty awful. They do some pretty terrible things, or at least people think that they do. Some of it, the elders are wrong about. But I think it’s important that at some point, an antagonist justifies his anger at least a bit.

Paste: This movie pushes itself a bit further from the even balance between comedy and horror that you’ve been known for in the past, coming in somewhat more horror first. Is there something about the horror genre that you continue to find particularly inspiring these days, in the mid-2020s?

Craig: I feel like horror right now is this strange security blanket for people as they go through a massive amount of change. It is able to give meaning to people’s lives, through darkness–but also through hope, right? I’m a darker person now, than I was when Tucker & Dale was made. I still have my sense of humor, but it’s not as frivolous and absurd. I wanted to show some of that darkness. There’s real villainy in this film, and the kills are … well, some of them are quite real.

But with that said, I think there’s some part of us that naturally tries to make sense of what we’re going through, and I think horror is helping us make sense of it.

Paste: Are you up for or planning sequels from Adam’s other books?

Craig: Well, if this film is a success there’s already two other books out and a third coming from Adam, who is a really talented writer. I’d be looking forward to taking another stab at a movie about a killer clown, if we get a chance.

Jim Vorel is Paste’s Movies editor and resident genre geek. You can follow him on Twitter or on Bluesky for more film writing.

Eli Craig on the Generational Culture Clash of New Slasher Clown in a Cornfield