Carnography

Hell House LLC 2: The Abbadon Hotel (2018)

As I said in my review of the first Hell House LLC movie, I came to this series very recently after pointedly ignoring it for some time, thinking it was just another generic found footage "investigation into a scary house goes terribly wrong" movie - and how very wrong I was. Part of the reason I finally got around to watching the first movie was hearing that a sequel was coming out, so after having the pants scared off me with the first movie, I then moved on to the second - Hell House LLC 2: the Abbadon Hotel. But will the sequel managed to be as horrifying as the first one, or did it use up all its scares already?

Set in 2017, it's been eight years since the events at the Hell House set up in the Abbadon Hotel caused the deaths of 15 people, and later the disappearance of documentary filmmaker Diane Graves, and both the film and the hotel have become urban legends of a sort, with thrillseekers regularly breaking into the hotel (and never coming out again) despite a police presence and morning news shows doing segments on the phenomenon. Investigative journalist Jessica Fox decides to do an investigation into the hotel and its deadly history after receiving a transcript from an unknown source and manages to persuade Mitchell Cavanaugh, the only surviving member of the 2014 documentary team, to accompany them into the hotel. Once inside, however, they discover not only more mysterious tapes that reveal more about the dark history of the Abbadon Hotel, but also that there might have been more to the events at the Hell House than had previously been known. Unfortunately, they also find themselves trapped in the hotel as well, as the dark forces there have plans for them that go beyond just terrifying and tormenting them...

For his 1961 horror film Homicidal, director William Castle created a promotional gimmick he called the "Fright Break", wherein audience members too afraid to watch to the end of the film had a 45-second window before the film's climax to leave the cinema and receive a full refund. After having to pause the movie about two-thirds of the way through again to go into the other room to calm down and pet the cat, I'd like to propose that we bring the "Fright Break" back, if only for the sake of my blood pressure and digestive system. Yes, I was slightly dubious as to whether The Abbadon Hotel could be as seriously unnerving as the first film, but after only 15 minutes my fears were assuaged - or intensified, depending on how you look at it. I'm not ashamed to admit that the sight of just a pair of legs standing halfway up a flight of stairs and doing nothing else managed to make me watch through my fingers for the remainder of the scene, or that even though I knew that Huggy the Evil Eyeless Clown (I started calling him Huggy in an attempt to make him less scary. It didn't work) would inevitably make an appearance, I still cringed in my seat when he did. In fact, I'm happy that The Abbadon Hotel continued in this series tradition of scaring the living daylights out of me because before I discovered the Hell House LLC movies I'd almost given up hope that I'd be scared by anything but jump scares (which don't count) in horror ever again.

The plot is, again, the weakest part of the whole movie, feeling a little bit hokey with its 80s Satanic cult meeting in the hotel and performing sacrifices for their own ulterior ends, but since the plot is really just the basic structure that the film hangs its atmosphere, scares and generally very unnerving air on, that doesn't really matter too much. I did spot one potential plot hole in the claim that the entire cult all committed suicide in the hotel's dining room, when in the previous film we saw just owner Andrew Tully hanging there, but since this film did finally explain what secret Alex had been keeping from the rest of his crew from the first film and we're apparently getting another film after this, I will remain optimistic that everything will eventually be explained (and if not, it's hardly that important anyway). Some of the plot twists are, again, a little too obvious - I know I didn't trust the rather cadaverous-looking Abbadon town council spokesman from the moment I first saw him, for example - but things still flow along smoothly enough rather than jerking forward awkwardly with abrupt revelations thrown at the audience in the third act like many modern horrors.

As well as Huggy the Clown, creepy ghost girl returns for the sequel as well, and she's also joined by some of the victims of the Hell House from the previous film. We also get a nice little Vanishing Hitchhiker segment and aspects of the way the Abbadon Hotel/its spirits operated reminded me of both House of Leaves and the Dionaea House, albeit with their own spin on it. The use of multiple sources of found footage, inserted throughout the film so that it jumps back and forth from previous incidents and a TV segment that gradually tells the story of how this new group ended up in the hotel, to the events that befell this ill-fated group, both keeps with the mockumentary style and serves to keep the audience off-balance, so that we're not sure where the next scare is going to come from. There's also a TV psychic who enters the hotel with our group, and much like with Grave Encounters I couldn't wait to see him meet a sticky end in there.

Hell House LLC 2: The Abbadon Hotel is currently available exclusively on Shudder, and is indeed meant to be the middle part of a trilogy. Clearly the series is building to something big for the third and final part, and I for one am really looking forward to seeing it.

 

 

Hell House LLC (2016)

Here we are, yet again, with another film I initially ignored for a while. I'd see Hell House LLC pop up on Amazon Prime, and I'd read the synopsis, but I never thought to actually watch it because I assumed it was just another low-budget found footage movie among many, and even I was starting to get a little tired by their sameness. And then I started to notice people posting about it, and the things they were saying were generally very positive. Then a sequel got released, and I figured the universe had given me enough signs and actually sat down to watch it.

And now that a day has passed and I no longer feel quite so afraid that I'm going to wake in the middle of the night and be attacked by a creepy ghost girl sitting at the foot of my bed, I can come here and gibber manically that this is a rare case of a film being worthy of the hype.

On October 8, 2009, a haunted house attraction opened in the small town of Abbadon, New York, in the town's abandoned Abbadon Hotel. During the opening night, something went terribly wrong and 15 people, including most of the staff and several patrons, died there, although no-one could discover what exactly happened, blaming it instead on an "unknown malfunction". Several years later, a documentary team decides to make a film investigation into what happened that night and the hotel's past. While making their film, they are contacted by the sole surviving staff member of Hell House LLC, Sara Havel, who agrees to be interviewed as part of their documentary and also provides them with tapes shot by the staff in the weeks leading up to the tragedy, as they set up the attraction. We watch the crew arriving and setting things up in the Abbadon Hotel, as well as seeing them start to experience eerie and disturbing goings-on that grow in intensity the closer it gets to opening night. What happened in the Abbadon Hotel that night, and how did anyone come to survive it?

There is a very small list of films that have truly managed to unnerve and/or scare me over the years. Ghostwatch. Ringu. The Last Broadcast. Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County. The Blair Witch Project (although technically there were external factors there as well). I can now add Hell House LLC to the list, because it does such an incredible job of creating tension and dread, and exploiting common fears (and I'm not even afraid of clowns!) that I had to pause the film about two-thirds of the way through and go into the other room to calm down for a bit before coming back to keep watching from behind my fingers. The atmosphere it creates really is that damn good.

Now granted, the plot is a little hackneyed. Abandoned place with a dark and sinister past, paranormal activities start happening, one person is there to "document everything" with his camera... It's Ye Olde Found Footage Checklist. There's also a bit quite early on in the "found" tapes where the crew find an old picture of a woman in the Abbadon Hotel and point out that it looks a lot like Sara, and if you know anything about horror movie plots and cliches you'll be rolling your eyes at that a little and making predictions as to how the rest of the film will turn out. Now I'm not going to say whether or not I was right in my predictions because that would spoil things, but I will say that I maybe should have given the film a little more credit. Besides, the story really takes second place to the incredibly creepy atmosphere that grows throughout the film's 83-minute runtime.

The scares/increasing creep factor are done very simply, yet effectively, through the use of things like camera framing and shadows, half-glimpsed images through strobe lighting (and later still images to clarify that what we thought we saw was actually there) and things moving about that shouldn't be moving about. And by "things" I mean a creepy clown mannequin with bleeding eye sockets that keeps moving about the hotel on its own. Coulrophobics beware - this film might not be one for you. There's also the mystery of what happened on opening night - at the start of the film we're shown footage from one of the patrons as they go through the house and start to notice some small unsettling things, but the alleged focal point of all the carnage, the basement, is never shown. Instead, for the rest of the film it gets talked about in vague yet unsettling terms, amping up the fascination and the dread that the audience feels as they imagine just what did happen. Of course, this does end up being a bit of a double-edged sword, as by the time we finally do get to see what went on in there the reality is a bit of an anti-climax as we've imagined something far different (and gorier) than what we see. At least, that's what happened with me.

There's a couple of other minor flaws to the film as well - either I missed something or we the audience are never told why Alex, the man in charge, is so hell-bent (haha) on staying in the hotel despite everything going on, even though we see the aftermath of some of the other staff being told; and there's a bit where two of the staff are running around looking for a missing friend of theirs and shouting out his name, and all my brain could do was add in Mike screaming, "Tell us where you are, Josh!" to the scene and after that it lost a lot of its gravitas. But these are very minor flaws indeed and don't really affect the finished product.

Hell House LLC, if I'd seen it in 2016, would have made my Top 5 Films of the Year. Now all I have to do is get up the courage to watch the sequel...

 

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It (1990)

Since I so recently reviewed the new version, I should really be efficient and do the 1990 TV version now. So here we are with the "original" movie version of Stephen King's IT; the one that launched a generation's coultrophobia (although personally it was the bleeding photograph that did it for me).

Derry, Maine; 1990. Children in the town are disappearing, and what's worse only some of them are being found; or rather, only parts of them are being found. The town librarian, Mike Hanlon, knows what is going on but cannot get the police chief to believe him. Instead, he calls his six childhood friends - all now highly successful adults living across the USA and even in Britain - and reminds them of a promise they all made as children. Back in 1960 the seven of them faced down the shape-changing, child-killing monster that was preying on their town and defeated It, and then they all made a promise together that, if It ever returned to Derry, they would also return and finish the job that they started. But will they even have the strength as adults to repeat what they did as children - especially when they can barely remember what happened back in 1960?

This version of IT was of course the first to come out (not counting the book, of course) and so there has been a lot of talk and debate over whether this version or the 2017 version is the better/scarier option. Personally I think this is an unfair comparison as so many of us grew up with the terror of the 1990 version, but looking back on it now requires some nostalgia goggles. After all, what scared you as a child in film, TV or otherwise is unlikely to still scare you as an adult. Yes, IT scared me when I was a pre-teen, but so did Zelda from Terrahawks, the Kandy Man from Doctor Who and The Nothing from The NeverEnding Story (although to be fair, that last one might still scare me. Existential nilhilism...)

No, the biggest reason the 1990 version of IT is still held in such high regard by so many is because of one person: Tim Curry.

Tim Curry had the role of Pennywise the Dancing Clown, and to say his role was a memorable one would be something of an understatement - why all those clowns didn't step up to defend the good name of clowns in 1990 is a mystery, especially when Curry's version of Pennywise has (until now, perhaps) been the iconic "evil clown" for 27 years now. Remember, this is the same Tim Curry who lost out on voicing the Joker on Batman: The Animated Series because his laugh was just too creepy for a kids' cartoon.

Of course, Tim Curry wasn't carrying the whole two-part TV movie on his back solo. The late Jonathan Brandis as young Bill Denborough, Seth Green as young Richie Tozier, and the late John Ritter as the adult Ben Hanscom - among others - all gave stellar performances, but somehow whenever this version of IT gets talked about it's nearly always about Pennywise and/or Tim Curry's performance.

Much like in the book version, there's a hint of Cthulhu or otherwise otherworldly entities in this version of IT, with the revelation of IT's true form and the concept of the "deadlights" as something that, if you look directly into/at them, they drive you completely insane. Of course, the deadlights have also been brought up in the 2017 version, but as that only deals with the events as children we're yet to see how things pan out there, while the 1990 version has everything contained within the two parts of the TV mini-series.

This 1990 version of IT, as I said, was originally made for TV in two parts that were later put together to make one three-hour movie, and it's here that the movie does fall down when you look at it critically. Stephen King's IT is a long book, and so trying to fit it all into three hours (plus ad breaks) is just not going to work. And they didn't even try to fit the whole book in - yet it still feels awkwardly paced - rushed in some places and too slow in others. That's the risk of the TV movie, of course. Looking back at it now, it's also incredibly dated, but that's not really a fair judgement to make on it considering it's cultural impact at the time. It was more than good enough for us in the early 1990s.

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IT (2017)

Is this perhaps the most anticipated horror film of this year? After seven years of waiting and no less than three different directors and screenwriters, there were certainly a lot of people waiting to see how this turned out. Add to that the entire generation who were traumatised by the 1990 version of Stephen King's IT and Tim Curry's Pennywise (early 90s tweens represent!) and yes, I'd say that this new version of IT has had a lot of people waiting with baited breath to see if it would live up to their expectations.

1989; Derry, Maine. One year after seven-year-old George Denborough "disappears" (read: has an arm ripped off and is dragged into the sewers by Pennywise the Dancing Clown), children in the town are still going missing and the town seems to be doing very little about it aside from establishing a curfew. George's older brother Bill hasn't given up trying to find his brother, however, and has enlisted his friends into his search as well. One by one though, the members of the self-styled "Losers' Club" have their own encounters with Pennywise which they sometimes barely survive, and they realise that there is a dark side to their town - one that has been around for a very long time and which the town's adult population are blind to, whether wilfully or not. It becomes up to the seven of them to find a way to stop Pennywise - or whatever IT is - before its next victim is one of them...

IT is of course a remake of the 1990 TV movie of the same name, and both are - obviously - based on the book by Stephen King. This 2017 version deviates from those previous editions in several ways; some obvious and others less so. For example, if you've read the book you will most likely be unsurprised to learn that that scene (and you know what "that scene" is if you've read the book) is not in the film for obvious reasons - not the least of which was to keep the film from getting an NC-17 rating (or worse...). Other changes include the changing of the time period from the 1950s to the late 1980s and the aging up of Henry Bowers and his gang by a few years.

Another big change from the 1990 film is that this film version of IT focuses solely on the characters' experiences with It as children, rather than trying to split the movie time equally between them as children and them as adults. This change allows for more time to be spent on the Losers' Club's individual experiences with Pennywise (including the leper at the house on Neibolt Street, which personally delighted me), but also lays the groundwork for the inevitable and already greenlit sequel where they all return to Derry as adults (hence why the end credits refer to the film as IT: Chapter One).

But of course, one of - if not the - big question(s) is: how does Bill Skarsgard measure up in the role of Pennywise the Dancing Clown? Answer: he's pretty damn amazing. Skarsgard (and pretty much everyone else) knew that there was going to be no way in which he could match Tim Curry's version of Pennywise, and so he made his own interpretation from scratch. With a more vintage appearance and a softer, more sibilant voice that rarely raises above a whisper, Skarsgard's Pennywise is terrifying in a whole new crouching and dribbling way. To add to his portrayal, he also trained with a contortionist and sometimes spoke in his native Swedish whilst in character, all of which adds to the otherworldliness and "wrongness" of Pennywise. In fact, when Skarsgard was first introduced to the children of the cast as Pennywise, they were all terrified of him by the end of their first scene together.

(The young actors who portray the Losers' Club are also excellent, in that you don't spend your time wondering how old they are really or not really believing their terror as they face off against It. Really, the film has great casting all round, and I'd say that the younger cast members have good careers ahead of them.)

IT is directed by Andy Muschietti, and it's here that perhaps my only complaint with the film lies. Much like with Mama, I found the film to be incredibly and even beautifully atmospheric... but not all that scary. Or at least, not as scary as I'd found the 1990 version to be. Maybe that's just me - a combination of decades of horror watching and a case of nostalgia goggles. Certainly enough people other than me have said that they were scared witless by IT, and it's not as though I didn't enjoy the film any less because of it. It's a rare film where I can't tell if some of the effects are practical and CGI, and so for that alone IT would get at least a halfway positive review from me. As it is, I'd even go so far as to say that IT is one of those rare films that actually deserves the hype and anticipation it received as well. Definitely a must-see.

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Howling VI: The Freaks (1991)

Howling VI: The Freaks was actually the very first Howling film I saw, way back in the mid-90s. I recorded it off late-night TV one night and watched it with a mixture of awe and bewilderment. Having never seen any of the other films in the series at this point, all I could think was, "Are all the other films like this?" Alas, as we've already seen and we're going to see today, this was not to be the case, but let's be honest, while many B-movies aspire to the top level of spectacular confusion, very few actually make it to the top, and for good reason. Howling VI is one of those special few, by reason of being utterly round the twist.

A drifter, a British man named Ian Richards, arrives in the small town of Canton Bluff - a farming town in the middle of a drought. He takes a job helping the town preacher restore his wooden church in return for room and board, and becomes friends with both him and his daughter Elizabeth. At the same time, a travelling circus comes to town, led by the mysterious (and also British) Harker. The circus also has a freak show, with such exhibits as a three-armed dwarf, a hermaphrodite who is male down one half of their body and female down the other half, a half-geek, half-bokor called Bellamey, and their newest attraction, Winston the Alligator Boy, who is slow-witted and bullied and tortured by the other freaks. Ian is hiding a secret, however - he is a werewolf - and when Harker finds this out he kidnaps Ian and forces him to be part of the freak show as well. When he finds he can't control Ian, Harker then sets him up as having murdered several of the townsfolk, when in reality it was Harker who had killed them, as Harker is, in fact, a vampire. In the end, a posse is formed to take down the monster (either/or at one point) and it comes down to a fight between werewolf and vampire - but who will win?

...I had forgotten in the 20-odd years since I last saw this movie that a cat gets killed in it. It doesn't happen on screen, but it still happens and is an upsetting scene (as it is obviously meant to be). The fact that the character who commits this act has already been shown to be a pretty nasty and irredeemable character doesn't improve matters in my eyes either - Carnography's Rule of Animal Deaths in Horror states that the death of an animal in a horror movie needs to be for some reason other than, "To show how unpleasant [x character] is", otherwise it's a cheap death. So when watching this film, be forewarned if you're sensitive to animal death.

Other than that... Howling VI is an awesome B-movie, which is all the more surprising when you consider the last two sequels. There's a potential reason for that - Clive Turner, the writer/producer/director of the last three sequels in one way or another, was not involved in this chapter of the series. Now I'm not saying that he is the touch of death for these movies, but... He comes back for the next movie in the series, so let's wait until then to come to any conclusions, shall we? Regardless, there is one blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment of continuity between this movie and Howling V: The Rebirth, when one of the two surviving characters from the end of that movie turns up to see Harker's werewolf show at the circus. Nothing is made of this in the film and the character isn't even listed in the credits (and hell, I wouldn't have even known other than IMDB's trivia page telling me) but it is there.

The various characters in Howling VI are all either remarkably sympathetic or thoroughly unpleasant, rather than just being stereotypes created to merely fill a role. the town sheriff, for example, starts off as suspicious of Ian but comes round as he gets to know him, and does far more than your average small-town sheriff in these movies. Winston the Alligator Boy might seem a little too much like a slow-witted innocent, but his character is genuinely endearing. And as nasty as they are, Mr. Toones the three-armed dwarf and Carl/otta clearly have a romantic relationship where they both care about each other, which was a brave movie even if it is only briefly shown (although for some time afterwards, I was a little confused as to how exactly hermaphrodites "worked", so to speak). Also... yes, that is Huggy Bear as Bellamey and Bruce Payne as Harker.

Harker the vampire deserves his own paragraph as well. He dresses like a low-budget Lestat a full three years before Interview With the Vampire came out, and just in case that image wasn't confusing enough when he is in his vampire form his head is bald, purple and shiny. He looks like a Halloween balloon stuck to a random body - quite effectively inhuman, but a bizarre choice of appearance for him.

There are a few genuinely confusing moments in the film - how exactly does a vampire attack turn someone into a werewolf? That and the crystal (moonstone?) and spell Harker uses to force Ian to transform makes me suspect something got left on the cutting room floor - but after the previous Howling sequels, especially the last two - Howling VI is a breath of fresh air. The fact that it works perfectly well as a stand-alone film as well helps it to no end, as you can then show it to people without needing to inflict the previous films on them. And you should show people this film. It is gloriously cheesy and entertaining in a way that only the B-movies of the late 80s and early 90s could be.

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31 (2016)

Rob Zombie's films tend to really divide horror fans. I briefly mentioned this in my reviews of his Halloween and Halloween 2 movies, but in general people tend to either love almost every film he's done or hate it and consider him a talentless hack. I, of course, like to be different and so try to take each of his films on their own merits - although I do have to admit that his films have a lot of redneck, grindhouse and exploitation themes. And 31 is a film which has these themes in spades.

Set on Halloween 1976, a group of carnival workers are travelling to their next gig when they are diverted and captured by a group of psychos dressed as clowns. They have been captured to take part in a sadistic game for the amusement of several rich people who like to dress as 18th century French aristocrats - the five of them are trapped in an abandoned industrial complex of some sort and have 12 hours to try to survive and escape while being hunted by a selection of murderous psychotic clowns. The five of them must find all their courage and strength to survive and fight back against their assailants, all of whom are better-equipped and far more experienced in the arts of murder than they are...

So, I guess we now know what Rob Zombie's version of The Running Man looks like. If you look at the brief plot synopsis above, I'm sure you can see the similarities between the two movies (and maybe also movies like Turkey Shoot, The Hunger Games and Battle Royale among others), but I think the Running Man comparisons are particularly apt because of the introduction and use of the killers throughout the movie. They're sent after our five protagonists one at a time, with a new one (or sometimes pair) sent out only after the previous one is... removed from the competition. Eventually they even bring out their final killer, Doom-Head (and more on him in a bit), almost the same way the bring Captain Freedom out in The Running Man as the final hunter of the survivors. Each of the killers has a distinct personality and killing style as well, which also leads to this film being possibly the first and only film with a Latino Nazi Dwarf Clown (and really, that just tells you nearly all you need to know about 31).

You can tell from films like The Devil's Rejects and Halloween that Rob Zombie has a strange fascination with rednecks and exploitation films, and 31 continues this trend. The film is set in 1976, for one, in the middle of nowhere (much like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) and most of the characters - protagonists and killers alike - could generously be described as "rednecks", straggly beards and all. The protagonists are all carnival workers too; transients working in a business many would consider sleazy (especially considering their main attraction is a girly show headlined by Charley, played by Zombie's wife Sheri Moon Zombie), but they're at least a family willing to fight and die for each other. The "aristocrats" and killers don't care for anyone but themselves, betting on the outcome of their "game", and as such are almost interchangable, with only their "characters" to distinguish them from one another. The violence throughout the film is also typical Zombie movie fare - splattery and extreme and peppered with occasional uncomfortable references to sexual assault.

The exception to this is the final killer, Doom-Head. Played by Richard Brake, whose previous roles have included The Night King in two seasons of Game of Thrones and Joe Chill in Batman Begins, he is first introduced to us at the very beginning of the film in an almost Fourth Wall-breaking scene but then doesn't appear again for over half the film. At first I thought he wasn't going to be a particularly interesting character, especially after the excesses of the previous killers (Latino Nazi Dwarf Clown, remember?) but he really was spectacular. From his preparation ritual, where he turns from just another typical redneck psycho into a greasepainted gentleman clown (reminding me of Ceasar Romero's Joker or even Conrad Veidt in The Man Who Laughs), before punching himself repeatedly in the face to finish the effect, to his calm demeanor as he stalks the survivors and treats the whole thing as a performance, I think he really did steal the show - moreso than some of the big-name actors like Meg Foster and Malcolm McDowell (although Foster was pretty damn good as well).

In the end, 31 is still very much a Rob Zombie film, which is going to be the make-or-break point for many people. It's grimy and sleazy and not all that different from some of his other movies, so if you didn't like his previous films you're probably not going to like this. It's quite predictable in places as well and the ending wasn't all that satisfying, but it still has some good moments like Brake and Foster's performances, and the troop of psycho clowns are certainly original in their personalities, to say the least.

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Clown (2014)

I've never really gotten the fear people have for clowns. I mean, sure, I and the rest of my generation were scared witless by Tim Curry playing Pennywise the Dancing Clown, but I'm pretty sure that had more to do with the fact that it was Tim Curry playing what may or may not have been an Elder God masquerading as a clown than anything else. Maybe I'm just one of the few people who didn't find clowns inherently creepy as a child. But evil clowns are very much a thing now, from pop culture to urban legend (and the occasional real-life horror), and that leads us to Clown.

Kent McCoy is a regular husband and father who just wants to make his son happy. So when the clown they hired for Jack's 7th birthday cancels at the last minute, he puts on an old clown costume he finds in a foreclosed house he is selling and saves the day. Unfortunately for Kent, after the party he finds that he can't take the clown costume off - or the wig, red nose or clown makeup. They all appear to be becoming part of his body, skin and hair. Kent also finds himself getting hungrier all the time, and the only thing that seems to satisfy that hunger is the flesh of children... As he becomes more and more demon clown-like, Kent and his wife Meg desperately search for some way to get the clown costume off and free Kent from this curse of becoming some sort of child-eating Icelandic clown-troll...

I love the story of how this movie got made. Back in 2010, Jon Watts and Christopher Ford made a trailer for a fictitious film called Clown and uploaded it to YouTube. The trailer also said that the movie was being produced be none other than Eli Roth of Cabin Fever and Hostel infamy. Well, Roth saw this and was so taken by the idea and  the "balls" of the filmmakers that he decided that he was going to produce the full movie, and so here we are. As inspirational tales for hopeful horror filmmakers go, it's a good one.

But what's the film actually like?

Well, it's not as gory and bloodthirsty as I had expected it to be, considering it has Eli Roth's name on it; there are a good few moments of gore and some very good cinematography showing it (my favourite being a scene where a pool of blood sloshes down a tube slide in one of those children's playland centres), but it's not filled corner-to-corner with the stuff. The more restrained nature of the gore I feel means that, when we see it, it's more psychologically effective because we know that something awful has just happened. Interestingly, we don't actually see many people get killed on-screen, and none of those are children, despite the clown-demon's diet. Is this just a case of shying away from showing kids get killed on-screen, one of the last taboos of cinema, or does not showing things make those deaths even more horrible?

The whole clown suit/clown-demon skin aspect of the film is also good, as we see it and Kent become ever more bonded together as the film progresses. In an interview Roth compared the film to that of the classic The Fly, and it's a good comparison - Kent gradually loses his appearance and identity to the clown-demon, from being unable to remove the clown nose to the suit actually becoming a second skin for him, while at the same time he becomes more and more bestial and hungry for children (much like all those fairy tales of trolls living in caves and under bridges who want to eat children or at the very least goats). I also thought that the rainbow blood was an inspired touch.

But... a lot of the movie's plot relies on people holding the idiot ball a lot throughout. Meg's father in particular is the most guilty of this - in any other situation, he'd be the guy couples write to agony aunts over and get the response to "sever" because he's just too toxic for their relationship. He really just gives off the impression that he's been waiting a very long time for an excuse to try to kill his son-in-law, and him turning into an evil clown is going to be as good a reason as any so dammit, he's not going to let any common sense get in the way of things. Most of the other characters have moments of stupidity as well though, and it just gets annoying when you keep wondering why they just take the word of people who would normally seem quite, quite crazy as gospel and don't, say, try to remove the costume themselves before believing 100% that it's stuck...

In conclusion, Clown is a relatively enjoyable film if you don't think too hard about it, but probably not for people who suffer from coulrophobia.