Frendo the Clown mascot of the small town of Kettle Springs is on a killing spree, killing a group of friends. Who is this killer and why is he after the teenagers?

The Setting

Quinn moves with her father Glenn to the small town of Kettle Springs where he is going to be the new doctor in town. Quinn befriends a group of friends during detention given by a teacher who hates these kids. Quinn gets invited to a bonfire by this group of friends and they pull a prank on her with a killer Frendo the clown, the town’s mascot. They make YouTube videos of Frendo who’s on a killing spree. But be careful. Life is about to imitate art. 

The Characters

Quinn is a 17-year-old girl who has moved to a little town against her will. After her mother died from an overdose, her father couldn’t handle the grief and fled to a small town to cope. First Quinn meets Rust, who walks her to school and warns her about some people. He’s a loner but has a mysterious relationship with Cole, which will become clear at the end.

Quinn befriends Cole, who’s the son of the Founding Family of the town, Tucker, Janet, Ronnie and her boyfriend Matt. They aren’t a bad group of kids, just bored in a small town with nothing to do. But they are creative and make many prank videos of Frendo, who’s making havoc, always for fun and meant to be harmless. Nevertheless these pranks often result in a little or big disaster, like setting fire to a parade float at Founder’s Day, and they even got blamed by stating fire to the Baypen Corn Syrup factory that has cost a lot of people in town their jobs, although that was due to a faulty wire. Still the older people in town seem to dislike them very much.

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Let the killings begin

• Death no 1: Tucker gets killed by Frendo in his own house in his bedroom. His throat gets slashed and he bleeds out on the floor where, how conveniently a plastic sheet was placed. A very considerate killer indeed.
• Death no 2: Matt gets killed at his house while lifting weights. When he uses the bench press, Frendo comes up behind him and puts a saw on the bar pushing it down on Matt, decapitating him.
• Death no 3: Ginger a girl who comes running out of the cornfield with an arrow in her back. 
• Death no 4: A unknown boy gets shot by an arrow.
• Death no 5: The first Frendo gets shot by Rust.
• Death no 6: Ronnie is running through the cornfield and runs straight into a chainsaw held by Frendo. 
• Death no 7 & 8: The second Frendo gets his hand shot off and he is brought to Glenn by another Frendo. The third Frendo gets stabbed in the neck by Glenn who leaves the second Frendo to die on the table. 
• Death no 9: Janet gets staked by a pitchfork by Frendo.
• Death no 10: The fourth Frendo is impaled with that same pitchfork by Quinn.
• Death no 11:The fifth Frendo gets his head crushed by a metal beam.
• Death no 12: The sixth Frendo gets a metal pole through her body.
• Death no 13: The seventh Frendo gets a taser stick jammed through his throat by Quinn. 

The Killer unmasked

On the video that was shot when they pranked Quinn with a killer Frendo, Quinn sees anther Frendo in the background watching them. Could that mean that the group of friends have something to hide. And it’s also a bit suspicious that Cole has all access to Frendo costumes, and paraphernalia of Frendo. He even gives Quinn a little music box, like pop-goes-the-Frendo. A gift that both Matt and Tucker found just before they got killed. It also seems that Rust doesn’t like the group of friends and he’s a good hunter. 

But it soon becomes clear at the Barn Rave Party that the kids have every Founder’s Day night that there are seven Frendos, stepping out of the cornfield each with their weapon of choice to hunt them down and to kill them. It also becomes apparent that they only have it in for this specific group of friends and Quinn. 

While they try to outrun them, Rust blows something up so Quinn, Cole, Ronnie and Janet can escape. When they run through the cornfield to get to the neighbor’s farm to call for help, they get to the road where sheriff Dunne arrives in his police car and arrests Cole. Leaving the three girls standing alone on the road. 

They run back through the cornfield where Ronnie gets killed. Quinn and Janet arrive at the neighboring farm but don’t know how to use a rotary phone. Janet gets impaled with a pitchfork by Frendo and Quinn pulls it out of her just in time to impale the Frendo. Quinn wants to escape with a truck but it has a stick, and she can’t drive a stick and gets captured by the four Frendos who are left. 

Meanwhile Glenn is forced by a Frendo to operate on another Frendo who got his hand shot off, but Glenn manages to kill them and goes looking for Quinn. 

Quinn is held in a barn and gets tasered with a taser stick. Cole is standing on a platform with a big noose around his neck, ready to be hanged. 

The Frendos reveal themselves to Quinn. It’s sheriff Dunne, shopkeeper Otis, waitress Trudy and their teacher Mr. Vern. But the big man behind it all is Arthur Hill, Cole’s own father. He explains to Quinn, that they like the values and how things are in Kettle Springs and that anyone who messes with their ways, have to be taught a lesson. A killer lesson. He even wants to kill his own son who he thinks is a bad seed, just like the other kids who are a bad crop by destroying the image of their good town and Frendo. He even wants to blame it all on Cole. 

So it’s not the first time they did this. His grandfather, the Founder started it all and killed hippies in the sixties, burnouts in the nineties and so on. And now the youth is making prank videos of their beloved Frendo. Naturally that had to stop and so it’s only reasonable to kill your own son, whom you hate. 

Luckily Glenn interrupts them, just before Dunne is about to shoot Quinn, by crashing his car into the barn. Quinn runs and manages to kill Dunne with his own taser stick by sticking it into his throat. Due to the crash Otis gets his head crushed by a metal beam,  and Trudy gets a pole through her body. Rust saves Cole by shooting the rope. But Arthur Hill manages to get away. 

The only survivors are Quinn, Rust and Cole and of course Glenn, but he was never a real target. While they escape with a Frendo car, Vern shows up in the middle of the road with his chainsaw. But Quinn runs him over, and the chainsaw buzzes right through Vern, leaving a bloody window to be wiped. 

In total there are 13 kills. 6 teenagers are killed and 7 adult Frendos. So the bad guys got it worse. That makes this slasher stand out, not one, not two or even three killers, but seven. And they all get killed mostly with their own weapons, which makes it rather ironic. 

The end

Some time after the events Quinn goes off to college and Rust and Cole are back together, finally able to express their love. They come to say goodbye and give her a going away present, a folding baton. Glenn is running for mayor. 

But we don’t know what happened to Arthur Hill, Where did he go? Guys like that never give up.

The movie is based on the book with the same name written by Adam Cesare and there’s a sequel, Clown in a Cornfield 2: Frendo Lives. And it’s also confirmed that there will be a sequel to the movie too. 

Of course you can read the book to find out what happens, but the first movie had some changes added to the story of the book. So that means that the second movie will also differ from the book. Anything can happen, especially in small towns with small-minded people. And remember beware of old people (dressed up like clowns).