Horror Comedies have a reputation of either being great or terrible, the mix of genres can work and has in the past but a lot of the times (especially in low budget films) the comedy just seems forced and lame. With Clinger (a new horror comedy from first time director Michael Steves) there are glimpses of a really good movie, but there are also a lot of very sloppy attempts at comedy.
The story follows Fern Peterson (player by Jennifer Laporte who did a really good job in her first feature film), Fern meets Robert Klingher (played by Vincent Martella who is best known for his appearance in the show "Everybody Hates Chris"), Fern and Robert are both fairly inexperienced when it comes to dating and they quickly fall for each other. Everything goes great at first but Robert begins to become much more invested in the relationship than Fern, it doesn't take Fern long to realize that it's time to break things off with Robert. However during the break up Robert is killed in a freak accident, now he is back as a ghost and more obsessed than ever. I really liked the plot line, it's one of the best parts of the movie in my opinion. They really do a good job of capturing the awkwardness of teenage relationships and that really gave the movie some charm.
While there is a decent amount of stuff to like in "Clinger" there is also quite a bit of stuff that really throws the film off and prevents it from being great. One of the big negatives that really stood out for me was the fact the two of the characters (Fern's Sister and Fern's Coach) were extremely obnoxious. You can tell that these were the two characters that were suppose to bring most of the laughs, everything they say is an attempt at comedy but 95% of it fell flat on me and after a while it just got really annoying. There are definitely some funny parts in the film, the more subtle jokes and even some of the psychical comedy worked really well, but too many times the film tried a bit too hard to be hilarious.
Parts of "Clinger" were extremely fun, gory, and entertaining as hell, unfortunately a few poor characters and a few too many bad jokes really prevented this from being a great low budget gem. Nevertheless this was still an entertaining Horror/Comedy, just a few steps away from being more than that.
5.5/10
