Clowns

A group of people go camping in the woods and are hunted down by a psychotic killer clown. I say "camping" but this is not your traditional camp with cabins. It's a campground where you use tents. Given the budget for this, it's probably really just an unmarked place in the woods. Still, I've somehow been enjoying this trash for over a decade now. There's a decent amount of ridiculous looking gore as well as some super cheap cgi gore effects. The acting is hysterical with lots of running and screaming and arms flapping and flailing about from pretty much everyone. I'm sure that most of you reading this will find nothing appealing about my descriptions, BUT if you do find yourself intrigued then this was probably made for you like it was for me.

I would've enjoyed this movie if it wasn't for the script. Very unimaginative and unoriginal, unlikable characters (especially the clowns themselves) and nothing made sense. It was quite obvious that nobody disagreed with with any of Tomb's scriptwriting flaws and they decided to go along with it despite the stupid plot-holes and confusing storyline. Hopefully this is a learning curve for Tomb as she clearly needs more advice on how to write.

Film was generic and clunky at times but Clowns is something to enjoy during this Halloween lockdown. I'm surprised this wasn't on amazon prime actually. I wished there was more with the clowns but alas we receive a cliffhanger like no other. The script needed work and the story is weak, hardly any jump scares but maybe that was the intention.

Clowns has a cast of actors who are clearly passionate about what they are doing. The characters were developed and interactive, each one having his or her own personality and story. This was apparent as the actors interacted with us in very character-specific ways.

Honestly, I live for this movie and I'm not even sure why. It's lowest of budget, but there's just something about it that I find so very comforting. Better late than never, it's not at all hard for me to see why this has been so embraced by horror clown fans. Rides the line so perfectly in being referential, paying homage to Friday the 13th/The Burning/the genre of slasher itself and articulating itself modestly. Very watchable, very rural and very much a relic of it's time. There's a temperance to it that I very much respect. A certified classic.

One of the aspects I always loved about "Clowns" was the cheesy practical cut-out gore effects. In this one there are still plenty of those but the CGI blood splashes that accompany them kind of take you out of the moment. Also there are some silly found footage camera effects that are more distracting than they are effective. Lesson to no-budget filmmakers please stay away from the computer graphics (this coming from a guy who does CGI for movies), and keep to the practical effects.

Overall Clowns is a decent slasher flick that would have been much better if it didn't rely so heavily on computer FX. I like how it tried to do something a little different by killing the clown and introducing a new killer but ultimately the movie was a bit of a let down due to the digital fx.