Clown

Clown has a decent premise: a man puts on a haunted clown suit for his kid’s birthday and slowly becomes a child-eating Nordic demon. It could either really lean into the terror that clowns invoke in many people, or it could go darkly humorous. Unfortunately, it doesn’t know what to do, and it ends up half-assing both, to the detriment of the whole thing. I’ll give it this, when it uses practical effects, the gore is outstanding. As Kent is slowly morphed into this demon, the monster design is great. And it has Peter Stormare as a kind of Dr. Loomis character, and Stormare is always fun. But the movie had a serious problem maintaining a tone. I can’t tell if it wanted to be serious and dark and demonic, or darkly comedic with a sinister satirical edge. It constantly feels pulled between the two, usually to the sillier side, even as the movie is killing off grade school age children in increasingly gruesome ways. Despite the body count and the ages thereof, the stakes never feel as dire as the movie is portraying. Which is odd, because the movie is adamant that there’s only two ways out of the suit: dismemberment or eating five children. And that brings me to the other big problem. If this movie had been about, say, an alcoholic absentee father, or some racist, abusive piece of shit, the way the movie plays out wouldn’t feel so awful. It wouldn’t be hard to cheer against the guy being turned into a monster because, you know, he was worthless as a person anyway. But by making him a loving dad with another baby on the way, and then making the two resolutions death or living with the immense guilt of murdering five children … thanks, movie. I know horror movies aren’t supposed to give me warm fuzzies, but the bleakness of this movie (especially with its tonal dissonance) lets all the air out of the tires. That third act, as things become increasingly grim, just drags on and on. Even in the final moments, it never feels as serious as ir should, but it certainly does feel bleak. This is a movie I really wanted to be better. It has a lot of good elements going for it, but it’s far too wishy-washy to know what it wants to be. It’s a sketch of a good idea that someone tried to sell as a finished product.