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Interview: Director Eli Craig Talks ‘Clown in a Cornfield’ and Why This Isn’t Your Typical Slasher Movie

May 9, 2025Ben MK




From A Nightmare on Elm Street to Friday the 13th, the slasher horror genre is a tried-and-true cinematic favorite that has given moviegoers some of the most bloodcurdlingly crowd-pleasing moments in Hollywood history. Whether it's a horribly disfigured psycho hellbent on revenge or a hockey-mask-wearing maniac on a killing spree, one constant of the genre has always been its menacing menagerie of antagonists, each of whom possesses an uncanny knack for dispatching with their victims in grotesque and inventive ways. It's a tradition that continues to draw in audiences, especially with recent genre standouts like the Terrifier series, the X trilogy, and the rejuvenated Scream franchise. And with Clown in a Cornfield, Tucker and Dale vs Evil director Eli Craig is putting his own stamp on this horror staple, in this blood-splattered tale about a group of high-schoolers who uncover a conspiracy of killer clowns in their small Midwestern town.

I caught up with Eli Craig to chat about Clown in a Cornfield, the horror movie inspirations that went into it, and his favorite recent genre entries, as well as to get his thoughts on how the potential tariffs on films made outside of the United States might impact the Canadian movie industry.

There are so many different types of slasher villains out there, but there's something inherently terrifying about clowns. What made you want to adapt Adam Cesare's novel, and did you make any changes in the process of bringing this story from the page to the screen?

Craig: It's a unique slasher movie; it's almost like you have to spoil it to give away why it's so unique. But there's an element of back-and-forth that you don't even usually get with slasher films, where the good guys that you’re following have as many kills as the bad guys. That part was really intriguing to me. And then, I think just clowns are back because clowns are back the world over. We see clowns — clowns as far as jokers to the right, clowns to the left, here I am. [laughs] And I feel like it's an appropriate metaphor for our time.

Basically, all the kills are made a little more cinematic. And there are elements where I condensed stuff in the book to just clarify the theme and also obviously fit within the screenplay and make it tight. And the order of it changed up. The opening scene in the book is referred to later in just a line of dialogue. So I used the book as my toolbox to build my house, but I used all the tools that were from the book.

Speaking of clowns, Stephen King's It arguably gave us the most iconic depiction of a killer clown, so I imagine that might have been one of the inspirations for this film. And perhaps even Tim Burton's Batman and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as well. What were some of the movies that inspired you on this one, and are there any homages that viewers should keep an eye out for?

Craig: We were definitely knowledgable of all that and maybe nodding toward it, while at the same time trying to be very much our own thing. Kevin Durand's character at the end is just uniquely human at the same time, and what he's going through in his sort of vengefulness — his resentfulness — is very much these very human emotions. So there's nothing supernatural about this one, and while It, I think, is just one of the best horror movies — both the Tim Curry and Skarsgård versions of Pennywise are just amazing — I was also really trying to stay away from it and develop Frendo as our own new clown within the genre of clown horror movies. He's sort of like the working-class, blue-collar clown that makes a lot of mistakes too. He's not supernatural, he's not all-powerful, but there's something very menacing that there's a human behind that mask.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre is obvious. Running through the corn, I couldn't resist a chainsaw coming after you. And the other one I just go to a lot is Jaws. There's an homage to Jaws at the beginning of this movie, because Jaws is a predator movie in the ocean, and I thought this was a predator movie in the corn. Like moving through the corn and rising up, and then seeing the horizon line above the cornfield is very much like water to me. And when you're down in it, you can't really see that much. So I definitely nodded to that as well.

There are a lot of tropes and clichés that permeate the genre, and there are parts of Clown in a Cornfield that try to subvert those elements, and others that lean into them. For example, with Tucker being the first of the main group to die. How did you approach riding that thin line?

Craig: I was kind of making a throwback movie to the '80s — a throwback horror slasher movie that I used to watch as a kid in the '80s. And yet try to make it very Gen-Z-aware and very present-day at the same time. Going into it, I'm also thinking about the audience that's going to see it, and I guess my dream from the get-go is that people my age would bring their kids — maybe 15, 16 — and you could both enjoy it. Because there's a bit of a nostalgia aspect to it that definitely plays back to the slasher movies of my generation, and then there's a bit of a Gen-Z awareness and authenticity to the characters that plays to today. So I wanted both at the same time.

Of course, a slasher film doesn't just live and die by its antagonist, but also the rest of the cast as well. And with Clown in a Cornfield, the cast really do an amazing job of helping to sell the concept and the terror of the movie. Can you speak about what they brought to this project?

Craig: Every single one of them kind of embodied their character. I wanted really unique, different characters that felt like a friend group of today — [where] you could see this group of kids hanging out together. And I feel like a lot of horror films today are written by guys my age, and it maybe talks down a little bit, or it maybe makes up dialogue that kids don't really say. So there's a lot of working with people that are a little closer to being in high school; they're maybe a couple years older, but working and saying, "Does this work for you? Is this the right dialogue?" And we would, in rehearsal, improv a little bit and get it to feel quite natural, and then often come back to the page with that feeling of like, "Oh, this is really authentic dialogue."

Was there a scene that was especially memorable to work on, or one that's a favorite of yours?

Craig: There are a lot of hard scenes, and sometimes the hardest scenes are the most memorable. Everything in the corn was pretty extreme — we were shooting in Winnipeg, Manitoba. This is an all-Canadian movie, all-Canadian cast, and thank God, because Canadians seem to be a little heartier than, sometimes, their southern brethren. It was -10 degrees, running through the cornfield in the middle of the night, where there's mud and muck and ice and stuff. But it was very memorable, because we're racing alongside them in a camera car and capturing them as they're running through corn; and our stuntman has a chainsaw over his head. Getting to the end of each of those nights felt like I had just climbed Everest, and [the] next night [it was] back to the same thing. But so much of filmmaking is the adventure of it. And this film was a wild adventure to make.

You just mentioned making the film in Canada, but Clown in a Cornfield also played in the States at SXSW. And in today's political climate, there's talk of tariffing movies coming into the U.S. made outside of America. How do you think that will impact the Canadian film industry?

Craig: Everything is just so up in the air now. You just never know if it'll turn on a dime and it will not exist, or if it'll actually be implemented. It'll be a difficult thing to implement, and frankly I'm not sure how that happens. Like, for instance, this movie's made independently in Canada, but we have a U.S. distributor, and then we have a Canadian distributor. So, U.S. owns the film. And, yeah, it was shot in Canada. So you would be tariffing a U.S. company that owns the film to play it in the U.S. So some of the things just don’t really make sense yet to me. I'll leave it to the future to tell me how that plays out. But the Canadian film industry's thriving, there's so many great filmmakers here and just unbelievable crews. So it's gonna keep going, one way or the other.

Last but not least, the horror genre itself is on quite the hot streak right now. What are some of your favorite recent horror movies, and are there any upcoming ones that you're looking forward to?

Craig: I loved Heart Eyes. I loved Companion, I have yet to see Sinners because I've been so busy with this campaign for my movie. But I can't wait to go see Sinners. I actually may go watch my film and then I'll go watch Sinners to see how great that movie is. But I'm just thrilled that horror is such an important genre right now, because I think it's always been an important genre in cinema. It is able to kind of alleviate some anxiety in our culture, and give people an outlet that [they] really need right now.
Clown in a Cornfield is in theaters May 9th.




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