When a film called "Clowntown" bills itself as inspired by 'True Events' you know that you are in for a cult classic, or an absolute piece of trash. I'll refrain from saying which this film is but seeing the number of stars I've awarded probably gives the game away, just like the title of this film gives away what to expect.
A group of friends (2 couples) travelling to a concert find themselves having to take a detour to a small town because of a lost mobile phone. The mobile phone is filled with personal information and identification. Upon calling the phone, a mysterious man gives the owner directions to the town where he will meet them. They head out to the small town and wait for the stranger who found the phone. As night falls, they discover that the town is, as the title of the film gives away, a town that is run by clowns. Imagine that instead of gang and gangsters, you have clowns and clownsters (I just made that word up). The clowns in the film terrorise the group, trying to kill them all off, one by one. The group must survive and escape.
Why are clowns terrorising a town - it is never really explored. This is basically a slasher film that looks pretty but does not have heart or a brain. There are loads of plot holes and silly concepts, that many in fact that I was annoyed from the start of the film. As well as being a slasher film this nodded its head to other horror films by using lots of cliché's and the occasionally very very subtle Easter eggs. While this is clearly a low budget film, it did not necessarily look like one. The look and feel were that of something with a bigger budget. The main detractors from this decent looking film though came in the form of the writing and the acting. There was no sense, when you break it down it wasn't original, and the characters being portrayed were flat, one dimensional idiots that I didn't care about. The clowns got off lucky, they had no dialogue, they just had to look menacing. Most of the time this was fine, but then the writing also made them do stupid things that you would only expect to see in a badly written script with limited imagination.
Director Tom Nagel and writer Jeff Miller have attempted to deliver something scary and engaging, but unfortunately after sitting through 86 mins of an attempted coulrophobia film, I was not sold. It felt like had this concept been given to John Carpenter, Wes Craven or perhaps Rob Zombie, then you would end up with a freaky or thrilling horror masterpiece. Unfortunately, with Nagel and Miller at the steering wheel, the film never gets out of first gear. I laughed more at the ridiculous events unfolding than I should have considering this was a serious horror slasher film - and I was not laughing because the clowns were funny. Never really falling into "that bad that it's good", and not strong enough to merit much of a cult following, I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news and say that this film will be forgotten quickly and will be extremely lucky if it makes it onto low budget cable.
Yes, there is blood and gore in the film, but not that much though. Yes, there is sexual content, nudity, and bad language. No, I would not recommend watching this with a young audience. No, I would not recommend watching the film and having high expectations. The best I can give is 2 out of 10; looks good, but actually quite weak.
