Wednesday Review: Clown

I think I went into Clown with something of a bias. I’m already stoked for Rob Zombie’s upcoming 31, and I felt a little like this would turn out to be the lesser Killer Clown movie of the year. Don’t get me wrong, I still suspect that it will be, but it had a strong identity fairly independent of most Killer Clowns that came before it. That alone makes it well worth a watch.

The thing that surprised me the most was the lack of humor in the film. This is actually a surprisingly positive point for the movie. We’ve all seen monster clowns as darkly humorous, so naturally that’s what we expect here. Instead, the movie builds a mythology around the origin of clowns. Our main character finds himself possessed by a child-eating demon who our modern face-painted performers are in imitation of.

The movie impressed me with its ability to really make me buy into this story. It sounds absurd recounting it in a review, but the film never winks at you. I even looked it up to confirm that the movie’s mythology is completely fictional. It legitimately sounded like something that might have come from folklore. Before the first act ended, I was buying what they were selling.

The movie’s pacing is unusual, primarily because it gives you most of the information on the nature of its monster fairly early in the film. However, the story turns this to its advantage. It tells us what rules the monster follows, and then makes us ask ethical questions about what we would do in the place of the characters. If you can make your audience question the nature of right and wrong in a movie about an evil clown, you’ve succeeded.

I don’t want to give too much more away, although I fully expect to eventually do a longer review of the movie. Instead, I’ll merely say that I’m interested to see what director Jon Watts does with Spider-man: Homecoming (although I remain somewhat apprehensive about a repeat of the Josh Trank fiasco). Until that movie comes out, however, I recommend giving this one a try.