Clown (2014)

Clown (2014) (see below for preview images and trailer)

Directed by
Jon Watts

Produced by
Eli Roth, Mac Cappuccino, Cody Ryder

Written by
Christopher Ford and Jon Watts
 
Starring: Laura Allen, Christian Distefano, Andy Powers, Peter Stormare

Budget $1.5M                         Box Office $2.1M
 
IMDb 5.7/10               Rotten Tomatoes 46%            Metacritic 42/100

I just happened to pick this up at the used movie store down the street from my house.  I didn’t know it existed and hadn’t heard anything about it until I saw the cover in the store.  They had a special rack of horror movies set aside for Halloween.  I grabbed this on a whim just because of the cover image.  It looked creepy enough to me to have potential.
 
Now, while it wasn’t IT by any stretch, it definitely didn’t leave me feeling disappointed.  I hate when I watch a movie and after the end I feel let down.  So, there’s that to start with.  Interestingly, the clown costume slightly resembles the new IT clown to me, but then again, that could be just me.  I mean, all those antique clown costumes are hideously terrifying.  I can NOT imagine who ever came up with the idea that clowns would be or could be entertaining to ANYONE, let alone small, helpless, hapless children.
 
Okay, so in this film, we have a typical family man, Kent McCoy, who is a real estate agent just trying to make a living to provide for his ever-growing family.  We start on his son’s birthday.  Kent’s wife, Meg, had ordered a clown but due to double booking issues, the company screwed up and no clown was sent for the party.  Jack really wanted a clown; he was so looking forward to it.  To find out that a clown wasn’t coming would just crush him.  Meg calls Kent and tells him the situation.  Kent, the doting father, springs into action.
 
When he gets Meg’s call, he’s at one of his properties he’s listing.  It’s an old property and the previous owners left quite a bit of stuff.  Kent starts to go through the boxes and chests in the basement and thankfully, by some miracle, he finds a clown costume.  With a few other random things from around the house Kent becomes Domo the Clown and heads off to his son’s party.  He’s a big hit with the kids and his wife is proud and considers him the hero of the day.  After a long evening of entertaining a bunch of kids, Kent falls asleep still wearing the clown suit.
 
The next morning, Kent wakes to find that the clown suit is a little more than difficult to take off.  The wig, the red rubber nose, the suit itself, have all seemed to adhere to his body.  His family thinks it’s cute and his son even thinks it’s cool that Domo the Clown drove him to school.  But Kent is no longer laughing.  When he tries to remove the rubber nose it causes him pain.  The same happens with the wig.  He can’t wipe off all the clown makeup either.  He even takes a little handheld jigsaw looking tool to the collar of the suit, trying to cut it off.  But, it’s completely indestructible.  
 
Now, Meg is a nurse so the two of them together think that she is a perfectly capable person to help with the removal process.  So, she grabs her hemostats and after a few very painful tries, they just straight rip that red piece of rubber right off his nose, taking a lot of skin and some underlying tissue with it.  That’s also when Meg notices that the wig isn’t a wig anymore, it’s become Kent’s actual hair.
 
And as if all that wasn’t bad enough, Kent starts getting the horrific desire to eat small children.  Afraid he will hurt his wife and family; Kent runs away and moves to a motel.  But he also finds the brother of the owner of the clown suit.  He goes to this man looking for answers but what he finds is much more terrifying.
 
The man tells him the suit is a demon and it is taking over his body.  The only way to end it…is to kill himself before the suit takes full hold of him.  Kent isn’t thrilled with this idea, I mean, who would be?  And neither is Meg.  Now, it’s a race against time to see if they can figure out an alternative solution that doesn’t require beheading Kent before he is lost to the demonic clown suit forever.
 
THE END 
 
This was a good film.  Although it wasn’t ultra-fast paced or action packed or anything like that, it was still entertaining and creepy.  Upon its United States release  in 2016 it received very critical reviews with few people having nice things to say about the film at all.  Personally, I didn’t think it was that bad.  I’ve seen way worse.  This wouldn’t get an Oscar or anything but I wouldn’t even go so far as to call it B-Rate horror either.  The acting was fairly good.  I recognized the guy that played the clown suit’s owner’s brother.  He’s in one of the John Wick movies, I believe it’s the second one.  
 
This was a pretty dramatic film.  There wasn’t a lot of comedic relief, if any.  No witty jokes really, no snappy one-liners.  It did make for a slightly depressing movie.  I mean, if you have a heart at all, you start to feel for Kent and his plight.  Though it does also bring to mind the old adage “No good deed goes unpunished.”. 
 
Still, I’ve not seen anything like this before.  It was definitely different.  I can’t say it’s a film I’ll be watching over and over however, it was worth watching at least once.  I will say that if I had gone to the theater to see this, I probably would have been a little pissed, with how much it costs to go to the show anymore.  But I got it used at the movie store for $5 or so.  So, I feel I got my money’s worth.  It might be fun to check out, especially if you love clown horror movies like I do.
 
RATINGS
3.5/5 Stars