This horror movie clowns around too much.

Take a horror movie like “Heart Eyes” and acknowledge the new directions it was taking within the genre. Take the latest “Scream” movies and appreciate how they don’t flip off the past and transcend with a new genre called “requel,” which wouldn’t completely be a sequel or a reboot, but a sequel that brings the characters from the original and new versions together.

Now, consider “Clown in a Cornfield,” and acknowledge that clowns can be scary, and they can be the stars of horror movies, like Pennywise the Clown in “It.” But think about it. Is it really a horror movie that wants to be a cult film reminiscent of the slashers from the 1980s? Yes, it wants to be, but it doesn’t take the genre to new limits. In fact, its traditions are just as exhausting as you would expect from a run-of-the-mill horror film. So, I guess this would be a run-of-the-cornfield movie. Or maybe that’s a corny thing for me to say.

Alright jokes from me. On to the movie’s set-up and characters.

It tells the story of a teenager named Quinn (Katie Douglas) and her doctor father Glenn (Aaron Abrams), who both suffer from a tragic loss and move into a new town, Kettle Springs, Missouri, which is best known for a Baypen corn syrup factory that mysteriously burned down. Their scenes are repetitive as she gets in trouble, they argue about their life choices, and then cool off again. And the cycle continues.

There are new townsfolk they come across are reminiscent of townsfolk from other movies.

Their first new encounter is the young redneck Rust (Vincent Muller), who seems the like the mysterious type.

The next are a group of trouble makers, consisting of the handsome Cole (Carson MacCormac), the buff Matt (Alexander Martin Deakin), his girlfriend Ronnie (Verity Marks), the Queen Bee Janet (Cassandra Potenza), and the nerdy Tucker (Ayo Solanke). Cole is also Quinn’s potential boyfriend and the mayor’s (Kevin Durand) son, while the rest are pranksters who use a killer clown as the subject for their YouTube videos.

There’s also the mean teacher Mr. Vern (Bradley Sawatzky), who seems to be related to Richard Vernon, the vice principal in “The Breakfast Club,” especially when he becomes the subject for jokes and giving students detention.

The mean town sheriff (Will Sasso) is hoping to the arrest the pranksters, especially since they’re already accused of burning down the factory.

And speaking of which, about those killer clown videos. That happens to be Frendo, the town’s mascot, who delivers a Baypen music box to his victims before he slays them. In fact, there’s a lot more Frendos, and Quinn and her new friends are in peril. The kind where barn houses are not ideal places to hide in horror films, unless they can cause a distraction with whatever tools they can find.

“Clown in a Cornfield,” directed by Eli Craig (“Tucker & Dale vs. Evil”), is a disappointment in clown shoes. Every once in a while, you get a good laugh. Every once in a while, you get a sense of nostalgia. And every once in a while you get clowns worthy of a cult movie or comic con event. But most of the time you get cliches, teens who don’t know how a rotary phone works for obvious reasons, people getting slayed, mean-spirited mannerisms, and predictable plot twists. A horror movie can be campy fun, like how we got “Death of a Unicorn” last March, and you movie-goers didn’t know what you were missing. This one ends up becoming more exhausting.