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Clowns in a Cornfield (2025) | Squeaky Shoes and Teenage Screams

• CuddleyMacaroon, DigitalBanBan, Ladycassaundra • Season 3 • Episode 1

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Killer clowns lurking in cornfields isn't just the stuff of nightmares anymore - it's the premise of Adam Cesar's popular horror novel that recently made its way to the big screen. Has the adaptation captured the gory essence that earned the book its 4.2-star rating across thousands of reviews, or is this another case of page-to-screen disappointment?

Welcome to a special hot take episode where Dani flies solo to break down everything "Clowns in a Cornfield."

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Speaker 1:

Hey guys, welcome to Apartment Theater, to the hot take of Solely Dani, just to give you guys an outlook of everything right now. We haven't stopped our show, we just are doing a lot less. We started to get burned out a lot by it doing episodes every single week and we don't. We enjoy doing this and we don't want to stop per se. So we're going to record episodes together when there's something that all of us want to see and talk about. But we will be live on YouTube and stuff with horror games or just game nights. So you can go check us out on our YouTube at Abartment Theater. So you can go check us out on our YouTube at Abartman Theater. Or you can check out me or Justin, who stream on our channels alone and tend to be on each other's streams like every night, every other night, which is Digital Bam Bam or Cuddly Macaroon. It should be linked in, like our bios on whatever you might be listening to this on. But just a heads up, we're not done. Episodes are just a little lighter than usual. So in the meantime, danny's hot take of Clowns in a Cornfield so Clowns in a Cornfield just came out May 9th. It is based off the novel Clown in a Cornfield by Adam Cesar Cesar. You know what I'm going to? Just All right, google ain't showing me how to pronounce it for some reason. But Adam is an American author of horror novels and short stories. He, I guess, wrote this one and I was getting conflicting stuff when I was Googling around that this was meant to eventually become a film or this just got picked up as a film. But either way, you can listen to his Cloud and Chord Field on audiobooks. It's on Amazon, barnes and Nobles and then a lot of local libraries. It looks like has shown up my local libraries. The book itself seems to be very popular. It has a really good star rating. I mean the one on Amazon has 3,800 reviews with a 4.2 rating, which I think is pretty great. 92% on Google reviews, I do hear it's pretty gory. So if you like gory horror books, definitely, I guess, check it out.

Speaker 1:

But now to the main event of my hot take of Clouds in a Cornfield. This, I feel, would probably be a better comparison if I like also read the book or something. But I only watched the movie and I do know how, nine out of 10 times, books that become movies tend to leave out a lot of stuff or just generally not be as good, definitely because you're not able to pack in a lot of information. It's not like that with every adaptation from books to movies, but with a good portion of it you do see it. Of course you get your movies that go out of the leagues and they still do well, like Lord of the Rings, harry Potter, the Hunger Games, but even all of them still had missing stuff. So I'm going to assume by that same that's going here.

Speaker 1:

The movie felt very fast-paced, of course. Um, it is entertaining to watch. I had a good time watching it. It's definitely a campy comedy, kind of horror, or at least that's how I took it, as it's listed as a horror crime, um, but I I would see it more as a horror comedy. Um, but how can you not have clowns in the movie and laugh, right? I guess I don't know.

Speaker 1:

Uh, so quinn is our main character that we fall. Uh, follow around in the story. Um, quinn and her father moved to the quiet town of kettle springs and soon learned. The fractured community has fallen on hard times after losing a treasured factory to a fire. As the locals bicker amongst themselves and tension boils over, a sinister grinning clown emerges from the cornfield to cleanse the town of its burdens, one bloody victim at a time. So that's what it's listed as, okay. So this also says it's looking for a fresh start.

Speaker 1:

Quinn and her father move. She did not want to move, she states it in the movie. She only moved to help her father try to um overcome the emotions he was feeling from his wife overdosing and dying, and he becomes this local town's new doctor. Of course, I mean, if you're moving to a small town, you already know it's not going to be that great. We mean the main like group, I guess posse. In the first like ten minutes when Quinn goes to school, she opens her front door to the kid that's down the street, rust.

Speaker 1:

I like him a lot. He's socially awkward and I enjoy that because I too am socially awkward. Um, he is trying to be, I guess, nice and be like show quinn around, tell quinn to be friends with not shitty people and of course she becomes friends with the shitty main cast. Um, it's all like your typical, like 90s horror movie. Um, that's what I really was. Getting a lot of feels from it. Um, I felt like I watched it before somewhere kind of thing didn't make it any less enjoyable. I still enjoyed it the whole time, um, but it just felt very familiar.

Speaker 1:

And when you meet the main cast, they're all kind of assholes. They prank the teacher the teacher's also an asshole, but it I kind of understand his reaction to like giving the kids detention because they were kind of shitty, and this seems like something that definitely led up to some like to shit and like the main cast, uh, pull pranks all the time and post on like I'm gonna assume probably tiktok kind of thing or like youtube, to like get views, and that's all they care about is views, views, views. Uh, the one blonde bitch that's all she talks about is getting views. They even pull a prank on quinn, which is really fucked up, um, and make her think the one kid died in front of her, and he really didn't. But one thing it does show is when you prank around a lot, when things get serious, it's hard for people to take you seriously, like the boy who cried wolf sort of deal. And so when they start getting killed and kids start getting killed because you know, I guess that's just what you do when everything is just kill all the kids, why not? And so there's that they all have a party and then just start getting massacred like freaking chickens or something, like they all just bam dash.

Speaker 1:

Just I don't know the sense making here of why killing the kids is going to solve anything. But you know who am I? But a stand-by-er or stand-by-ee? So as you follow Quinn throughout the movie, she starts getting what you think is relationship vibes with Cole, which is the mayor's son, who has a troubled past. He's blamed for his sister's death and he didn't. It was just a very horrible accident but it was easy to blame him. And when you are dealing with trauma or you're just trying to find an easy way out, you will rationalize and pick the easiest thing to try to rationalize, instead of maybe even blaming yourself, like he wasn't watching his daughter or something. So he blames the son. You know stuff like that. So the father blames the son, which you find out later and you think this is just one clown killing everybody. No, no, no, it is all of the adults killing people or killing kids, just killing the kids.

Speaker 1:

Um, like I, I I think like 45 minutes in, when I was watching it with John, I realized that it was definitely a cult-y kind of thing, if that makes sense. Not really a cult, because they aren't worshiping anything, but they are definitely in this together to try to make things better at the end, I guess. Try to make things better at the end, I guess. And uh, it's. It's just got a lot of like interesting deaths in it, some superhuman strength deaths like I. They definitely are on roids or something. The way they lift up, like some of these girls, like the girls definitely are tiny, very, very tiny, probably no more than 120 pounds, but to lift somebody 120 pounds up in the air on the end of a stick is impressive, like very impressive. Um, as a whole, the movie was a lot to like, really digest, because just so much was happening.

Speaker 1:

Again, like with any book, there's just a lot of information to process. I am going to be making a cosplay for Boston Comic Con, so maybe I will go and listen to the book and maybe come back with a double take of the book compared to the movie. But when it's just a movie by itself, it's entertaining, fun to watch. I would suggest it had a good laugh. The squeaky shoes were pretty great on the clowns. I definitely wouldn't suggest that when you're sneaking up on people, but you know why not Um, the dad from uh or the Mandy's dad from um, young Sheldon's in it he's a cop but also a killer clown, so that's a thing.

Speaker 1:

The main actress is adorable and very short. She's like a solid five foot, because I had to look it up because she looked like the rest of the cast looked like they were like six feet tall or something and she was like an average height. But no, she was just five foot and everybody else was just on the taller end and made her look super short. Um, the acting was okay in it. Uh, it wasn't horrible. It wasn't great but wasn't horrible. So I'd say, definitely give it a watch. Like I don't know what else I have to say about this. This is one crappy thing about doing a hot take by yourself. It's just like when there's so much to take in and you just got so much to talk about, I'm pretty sure I just for 13 minutes didn't talk about anything other than just it's a movie. That was a book and the book is really good, I guess, and the movie's okay, just like any other book that became a movie.

Speaker 1:

Um, the character that plays Rust kept making me think of that character from Wednesday. What's his face man? I can't think of his name Tyler Hunter Doohan or something. What's his face man? I can't think of his name Tyler Hunter Doohan or something. He kind of looked like him, but when I looked it up, this kid doesn't have a really huge acting list. He's got like a couple things in him, but not much. He's Riverdale or something, but yeah, he looks like that guy. Maybe they're related. Nope, definitely not related. I just looked at their last names definitely not related. They look related though. So there's that.

Speaker 1:

Um, the movie definitely sets up for a sequel. Is there going to be a sequel, who knows? For $100 million budget. I think the movie did great when most budgets need more to them than just that and got less. Some of the kills in it were definitely Final Destination-y and just were very comedic. But yeah, that's really all I got to say about Clown in a Cornfield. It's entertaining.

Speaker 1:

I suggest watching it. It's an audiobook too, so maybe go listen to it. I hear it's okay. Yeah, otherwise, check us out on YouTube. Uh, apartment Theater. You actually have to put in an Apartment Theater podcast, because otherwise, um, actual Apartment Theaters come up on how to make them in your house, which you know what Power to you if you do that. But, um, if you want to watch us live and play some horror games and stuff, that's the easiest way to find us.

Speaker 1:

Like I said in the beginning, we're going to definitely try to record when we all see a movie, but we're just trying not to burn ourselves out. I really wanted to see this movie. I put a vote up on Spotify. So definitely check out the Spotify because I'm going to try to keep up some polls on there about movies like maybe we should watch, or even comments on there, because we can see your comments off of that at least of maybe suggestions and we'll see in the future. But as of right now, we're not gone. We just might be like a week or two in between takes. But definitely check out the next episode where I'm gonna have another hot take and that hot take is gonna be on Bring Her Back, which I am excited, trying to see if I could drag Justin and Cass into it. They're they're a little on it like if they want to see it or not, but either way, I'll be back for that hot take and, um, yeah, check us out on YouTube and get the fuck out. Bye.