Meeting up for a contest, the winners who get to tour a sneak peek at a special haunted house arrive for their trip along with several workers at the store that sponsored it, but when the experience starts to go wrong, they realize a deadly secret involving the hosts that put everyone in danger from murderous clowns.
This was a pretty decent genre effort. Among the better qualities here is the highly impressive atmosphere that runs throughout the entire film. The main part of the haunted house is quite entertaining, with the usual props and setups featured in cheesy haunted houses featuring rubber spiders, cobwebs strung up randomly throughout in weird spots, falling-apart scenery and props, and a general air of purposeful cheesiness that feels like most normal haunted house displays of this type. That it feels right in line means that the arrival of the clowns here feels very much in line with the type of setup here so that it's hardly noticeable and surprisingly believable that no one would be able to tell what's going on. By the time it gets to the carnage in the latter half, this one picks up considerably with the film going for a strong torture-film storyline involving each f the group members brought unsuspectingly to the clowns and then tortured mercilessly before being killed off. It's quite an impressive idea to try to go this route as the requirement of the group not realizing that the others haven't returned yet which is overall quite enjoyable as there's plenty of strong work done here to both get the necessary excuse for the trip away from the group and to keep everything a secret for as long as it is since the kills are quite gruesome. Given the big final twist reveal that ends up tying everything together for a nice shocking surprise, this one does manage to contain some fine positives overall. This one does have some issues. The main factor on display here is the excruciatingly long setup that takes forever before getting to the haunted house or even the killer clowns. The early part of the film, featuring the group meeting up at the shop and going through the usual get-together conversations so that we get to know who's there. Going through the motions of the usual group introductions and failing to get any extra hookups together doesn't have any real excitement or interest here, tending to be just absolutely dull instead with the lack of action featured. Coupled with the early setup-up of the attraction that doesn't offer up much of anything and the obvious low-budget nature of the presentation that can wholly detract some viewers, these here are what really hold this one down.
Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language.
