CLOWN (2014)

Studio:       Anchor Bay Studios
Director:    John Watts
Writer:       Christopher Ford, Jon Watts
Producer:  Mac Cappuccino, Cody Rider, Eli Roth, Brian Oliver
Stars:     Laura Allen, Andy Powers, Christian Distefano, Elizabeth Whitmere, Chuck Shamata, Peter Stormare

Review Score:

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Summary:

A father dons a clown suit to entertain at his son’s birthday, but discovers the costume is actually a cursed demon’s skin.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

When the entertainer cancels for his son Jack’s birthday party, realtor Kent McCoy scavenges a clown costume left behind at one of his vacant properties and plays a character named Dummo. Afterward, Kent discovers that he is inexplicably unable to remove the suit, nose, or wig.

Kent’s wife Meg pulls off the nose, but takes a chunk of Kent’s flesh with it. Kent and Meg realize that the rainbow wig has somehow become Kent’s natural hair.

Kent tracks down Herbert Karlsson, owner of a collectible costume business and relative of Martin Karlsson, the deceased occupant of the property where Kent found the clown suit. Herbert explains the Nordic legend of a killer creature that feeds on children and came to be known as a clown. Herbert drugs and restrains Kent, claiming that the suit is the monster’s skin and will now gradually transform Kent into the demon. Herbert tries to decapitate Kent as the only way to break the curse, but Kent escapes and takes Herbert hostage.

Kent returns home and frightens his wife’s family with his wild claims of a cursed costume. Everyone is shocked to see Herbert held captive in Kent’s car. Kent inadvertently breaks his brother-in-law Dave’s arm before driving away with Herbert.

Kent crashes his car when Herbert tries strangling him from the backseat. Kent leaves Herbert unconscious in the car and flees. As his transformation into the demon continues, Kent realizes he has a growing appetite to eat children.

After biting a child camping in the woods, Kent reasons that the only way to stop his newfound evil urges is to commit suicide. Kent holes up in a vacant apartment and shoots himself in the head, but is supernaturally resurrected. He then tries decapitating himself with a buzz saw contraption, but it accidentally kills a curious kid who wanders in from a neighboring room. Kent tastes the child’s blood.

After searching for her husband in his vacant properties, Meg eventually finds Kent. Meg reveals that she is pregnant. Kent agrees to return home with her, insisting that Meg chain him up in the basement and not release him until they find a way to separate him from the suit.

Meg goes through the journal Kent brought back from Herbert’s warehouse. She discovers that Martin Karlsson was a doctor in a children’s cancer ward and Herbert once wore the costume as an entertainer at his brother’s hospital.

Meg visits Herbert as he recovers in the hospital. Herbert claims only he can help and advises Meg not to trust Kent. Meg asks how Herbert removed the suit when he wore it, but Herbert does not answer.

Meg goes to the house where Kent found the costume. She finds a videotape and watches footage of Herbert fully transformed into the clown demon and writhing furiously as he is chained to a chair. Martin Karlsson paces around his brother quizzically.

Jack comes home after being bullied at school by a boy named Colton. Kent lures Jack downstairs and convinces his son to let him go. Kent tracks down Colton and kills the boy in his home as he plays video games.

Meg rushes home to find Jack alone. Their dog Shadow, who previously ate the clown nose pulled off Kent, turns monstrous and attacks. The dog’s charge is suddenly stopped when Herbert arrives and decapitates the animal.

Herbert explains to Meg that he acquired the suit through an estate sale for an Icelandic aristocrat. He unknowingly wore the suit to entertain his brother’s patients and gradually transformed into the monster she saw on the videotape. Martin was able to exorcise the demon and free Herbert from the costume by sacrificing five children under his care to the demon, one for every month of winter. When Jack tells them that Kent went after Colton, Meg and Herbert rush to the boy’s home and find Colton’s mutilated remains.

Becoming more demonic, Kent terrorizes children and their families at a Chuck E. Cheese. Meg and Herbert find Kent at the restaurant. Through her husband, the demon tells Meg that it requires only one more child, and asks her to sacrifice their son Jack. Kent flees. Meg leaves. The cops arrive and presume Herbert is responsible for the slaughter at the scene.

Meg nearly brings the demon another child, but her potential sacrifice is interrupted by an intervening police officer.

Meg rushes back home to protect Jack. Kent arrives and murders Meg’s father Walt. Meg and Kent begin a protracted physical fight over Jack, during which Kent goes after Meg’s unborn baby. Their confrontation eventually ends when Meg successfully decapitates demonic Kent. The suit ends up confiscated as police evidence.

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Review:

Steve Martin had it easy.  After filling in for a no-show entertainer at his son’s birthday party in “Parenthood,” Martin’s tin star was tossed in a drawer and his cowboy chaps went back to being a bathmat.  For Kent McCoy (Andy Powers) of “Clown,” returning to reality as an unassuming suburban family man is not so simple.

When a clown cancels at the last minute, realtor Kent scrambles to save his son’s b-day celebration by rummaging through a vacant property and scrounging up a clown costume.  Kent’s creation “Dummo” is a hit with the kids, except come morning, Kent finds that the suit, nose, and wig won’t come off his body.  In fact, the rainbow curls have somehow transformed into Kent’s actual hair.

Kent does a little digging and eventually learns what he is wearing is actually the skin of an ancient Nordic demon.  As Kent slowly transforms into this grotesque creature of legend, he also develops an insatiable hunger for child sacrifice.  While Kent struggles to break the curse before his growing bloodlust consumes him, his wife Meg seeks insight from a secretive costume dealer to stop her husband before he can kill their son, or anyone else.

Appearances can be deceiving.  Director Jon Watts’ “Clown,” the feature-length extension of Watts and Christopher Ford’s faux trailer from 2010, may not necessarily be a coulrophobic’s worst nightmare in film form.  In other words, the movie isn’t quite so heavy on Pennywise-inspired imagery or circus-set mayhem as its title might suggest.  “Clown” is more along the lines of a supernatural slasher mixed with transformation thriller where the person possessed just happens to be deforming into a demonic clown.

With Eli Roth onboard as a producer, it was Watts and Ford’s sly wink at Roth in their mock trailer that got them noticed in the first place, horror fans in the know have an inkling of the style in store.  “Clown” doesn’t swing for the fences of gross-out gore or boffo black comedy with the same unrelenting gusto for which Roth is infamous.  But its fine-lined streak of dark humor puts enough subversive personality into a simple setup to make “Clown” a movie worth squirming through the gruesome parts while chuckling at the subtle self-awareness.

“Clown” gets a great deal of its gags courtesy of some clever cutting.  A shot of someone wiping projectile vomit from her face is followed by a shot of someone else licking fingers following a diner meal, for instance.  The tactic is a bit of a cheap trick to get an audience to grimace, yet the smart methods by which editor Robert Ryang pulls extra mileage out of scene transitions goes a long way toward giving “Clown” its tone of unusual body horror with a touch of sinister snickering.

The film can be funny, though you wouldn’t describe it as outright comedic.  The movie understands it has a somewhat silly concept, but Andy Powers as Kent, Laura Allen as his wife Meg, and the always odd Peter Stormare pretend not to know by wonderfully playing their roles straight.  The actors’ earnestness balances with the filmmakers’ sarcasm to strike the right mood of weirdness that is sometimes amusing, sometimes revolting, but usually entertaining.

“Clown” drags one foot during a last act that is longer than it should be to stay peppy.  There’s also an elephant in the room with regard to repeated violence against children, such as a bloody terror spree in a Chuck E. Cheese, that won’t sit well with some parents or those offended by such insinuations.  Even though the movie doesn’t have much of a moral code regarding that aspect, it also doesn’t play insensitively loose with its kid-centric carnage.  A child-eating demon clown is part of the story after all.  Either embrace the idea with the same sense of frightening fun as the film, or be forewarned that a different flavor might taste better in your teacup.

Review Score:  75

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