Movie Review: "Clown" (2016)

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Movie: "Clown"

Director: Jon Watts
Year: 2016
Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour, 40 minutes

A man dresses up in an antique clown costume for his son's birthday. He later realizes the costume is cursed and won't come off unless he fulfills its demon-possessed demands.

"Clown" is a horror thriller directed by Jon Watts, who would go on to direct films like "Cop Car" and "Spider-Man: Homecoming." He also wrote the film along with Christopher Ford. It stars Andy Powers as Kent, a real estate agent who finds an antique clown costume in a house he is selling. His son is about to have a birthday party, but when the clown they ordered cancels, Kent, being the loving father he is, dresses up in the antique costume and fills in at the party. What he doesn't know is the costume was cursed by a demon who turns him into an evil monster clown. Kent must now pay a toll in blood if he ever hopes of getting the costume off of him.

This film has an interesting concept. A lot of people find clowns creepy as hell, so creating an origin story/surrounding lore about an ancient child-killing demon antagonist is a fantastic idea for a horror film. There is some cool stuff here, like Kent's transformation into said demon clown. It creates a variety of unsettling images as his human face evolves into that of a demon clown creature full of tatters, tears, and scars with the shadow of past clown makeup. The movie is also quite dark in nature since the target of the demon's wrath is children. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the film is more dramatic than scary. It is very slow paced as Kent tries to uncover the history of the suit and figure out why it won't come off. He even contacts the past owner, slowing trying to unravel the mystery, which is mostly spoon-fed to the audience through exposition. Only occasionally do we get a scene of horror, and these instances are few and far between. The majority of this flick winds up being a bit boring, which is disappointing considering the overall concept. It feels like wasted potential.

Every director has to start somewhere, but we think that even if you are a fan of Jon Watts' more recent films, "Clown" should probably get a hard pass. It's not as effective as we would have liked from a story with so much potential and it lacks a lot of oomph, chills, and thrills despite some solid makeup work.

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My Rating: 5.5/10
BigJ's Rating: 5.5/10
IMDB's Rating: 5.7/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 48%
Do we recommend this movie: Meh.