CLOWN (2016)
It lived up in the mountains with a skin as white as snow and the red nose blistered by the cold, it lured children out of the villages into its cave. Five children. One for every month of winter...
(There will be major spoilers so skip if you don't want to be spoiled)
Technically this movie was released in 2014 but not in North America. We got it this year as a VOD release and I was so stoked!
Kent is a real estate agent with a wife, Meg and a 7 year old son Jack. Jack's obsessed with clowns and for this birthday Kent promised to dress up as one. But he forgot and last minute searches through a house he's selling only to find a trunk with the perfect clown costume inside. Excited, he throws it on and shows up to his sons birthday to save the day.
The next morning Kent realizes he can't get the suit off. The nose is jammed on, the wig won't move and the suit doesn't have a zipper. He manages to get most of the makeup off but it keeps coming back. After attempting to cut the suit off he instead slashes his wrist open by accident and then breaks off a saw blade attempting it again. Meg finally manages to remove the nose by basically ripping it off but along with it comes a few layers of Kent's skin.
He starts to panic and so tries to find the origin of the suit. The house it came from belonged to Marty Karlsson who is now deceased. Kent tracks down his brother Bert who asks him to meet him with the promise he'll help him remove the suit. After sharing a terrifying story of the origin of the clown, the original clown, it was not funny at all, he drugs Kent and attempts to cut off his head. Apparently that's the only way you can stop the suit...it's not a costume, it's skin and hair of a demon.
Kent rushes back to his family who now think he's insane and instead he's left to hide away in one of the properties he's trying to sell. His body begins to change and for some reason he's incredibly hungry all the time...especially when he sees children.
Alright...so what did I love about this movie?
- The attempted suicide scene is so well done and it's stuck with me since I originally saw this film almost two years ago. The splatter of rainbow blood and the pause where you think it actually worked...
- I love that the film just jumps right into the story, there's no messing around. The suit is on within the first 5 minutes.
- The backstory is great and once again, it doesn't mess around and is straight to the point. It's a demon skin that slowly turns you into the demon.
- If you don't want to cut the head off of the demon, the other way to get rid of it is to feed it five children. This leads to one of the most tense scenes in the film where Meg basically kidnaps a child and has the tough decision whether to feed her to her husband or not.
- The transformation is subtle but incredibly amazing. The final scenes with the clown are nightmare fuel.
- One of the final scenes is with the clown inside a child's play set/arcade and it's so creepy and terrifying. Incredibly well done.
What I didn't love?
- Frankly, I have no complaints.
Overall?
Presented by Eli Roth, this film was written and directed by Jon Watts who did an absolutely phenomenal job. This is body horror at its best and most subtle. There aren't a lot of scenes that are really gory except for a notable shot of Kent's fingers and toes elongating and when he spits out his teeth in the sink. The fact that this movie shows children getting murdered without flinching from the shot makes me happy too. Ya'll know I love a good children being killed movie.
Clown reads like a fairy tale gone wrong in all the best ways and it's a simply horrific, terrifying film that has stuck with me since I first saw it. I recommend it a lot and will continue to do so. When I preach about supporting indie horror - these are the movies I'm talking about. This movie still doesn't even have a DVD release yet, but we have to support indie horror because sometimes we get near perfect movies like this.
10/10
Stay Spooky!
