Creepy Clowns (2016) — Triskaidekafiles

CREEPY CLOWNS

WRITERS: Story by Trevor Wright and Pete Jacelone

Screenplay by Trevor Wright

DIRECTOR: Pete Jacelone

STARRING: Heather Drew as Peyton

Daylan Ludemann as Connor

Edward X. Young as Dale

Pete Jacelone as Larry

Lisa Deane as Lyla

Chase Bolnick as Young Larry

Gedaliah D. Lozon as Brad

Ben Akaezuwa as Troy

Jesse Amici as Tony

David Teitel as Sam

Matt Radzai as Nathan

John Link as Diablo Sanchez

QUICK CUT: A wereclown with a tickle fetish murders people. Yes, you read that correctly.

THE MORGUE

Larry - A quiet former art professor who still teaches on the side to help pay the bills, who has a tragic backstory that turned him into a murderous wereclown, as one does.

Peyton - A prostitute who doesn’t seem very good at her job, who takes no shit, protects her family, and is good with a knife.

Connor - A dude with a crush on Peyton but is too busy playing video games to do much about it.

Dale - Or rather, the personification of Dale, one of Larry’s mom’s boyfriends. He was a clown, and a dick, and tormented young Larry, contributing to his…curse? And still lives rent free in adult Larry’s head.

Diablo - Peyton’s pimp, who just wants his money, and is a violent sociopath.

I…what? We’re really gonna go with that, huh? Okay…

TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions! We are continuing with April weirdness, and a movie I found awhile back, called Creepy Clowns. This is our latest entry in "most recently made movies we've taken a look at", and with a plot that can be summed up as "wereclown triggered by the sight of a crescent moon with a tickling fetish who goes on a murder spree" sure does sound like one of my kind of movies, doesn't it? So let's see how right I am.

The movie opens up in...I dunno, the 80s probably, with a little kid doodling some art, when his drunk of a mom and her clown of a boyfriend come in yelling at each other. And no, that is not a euphemism, he's an actual clown.

She storms off, and the boyfriend turns his drunken attention to the kid, snatching his art, and tears it in half.

Am I a joke to you? — We live in a society.

The kid starts to cry, and Dickhead the Clown continues to make fun of him, because Larry never seems to laugh.

Dickhead decides to try and force the issue, by grabbing the kid, tearing off his shirt, hoisting him onto the kitchen table and beginning a round of tickle torture.

He does the usual "Am I touching you? Am I touching you??" a lot of bullies do, and uhh...

Larry eventually starts convulsing, having a seizure, and fortunately they call 911, and get him some help But we jump from there through the credits to the present.

The kid is all grown up now, and an art teacher..well, he used to be, but he lost his job but is still doing some independent teaching. He heads out to the park to do some sketches, while we meet some other characters.

Characters such as Brad who is meeting up with some friends before he heads out on a plane in the morning. Plans that include finding Tony's cousin's pot plants in the woods and having a good time with them.

Pot plans which, after he finishes his sketching, just so happen to be found by Larry, and are in the process of being pissed on when the kids show up, upset that someone is pissing all over his cousin's legacy.

I mean, I guess it's better than pissing all over hospitality, but whatever.

Larry is a bit snarky when he probably shouldn't be, and Tony starts kicking the shit out of him. Unfortunately, they've messed with the wrong guy, because Larry sees a crescent moon, just like in his torn sketch 30 years ago, and SOMEhow this triggers him to become a clown.

... ...I GUESS.

Brad goes to see if Larry is okay, and the Clown tears his throat out for his kindness. Oops.

He was only one day away from retirement!!

Troy screams like a little girl and runs off, Tony pisses himself and does the same, and then the Clown drags off his first victim.

Sometime later, Larry awakens in his apartment/office, with a student banging on the door for a meeting.

Larry peeks out the window, sees the crescent moon again, and it's not long before Sam gets stabbed with a feather and killed. Seems like that would take awhile, so the clown chokes him out as another student arrives

Don’t make me funny. You wouldn’t like me when I’m funny.

Elsewhere, Peyton, Brad's sister, barges into his apartment he shares with lazy gamer dude, Connor. He thinks Brad got on his flight, but Peyton sees his bags are still there, so they know something is wrong. The pair get ready and go looking for Brad or his little crew of dipshits.

They show up at Troy's place, who is in the middle of some stuff and has no time for their nonsense, and would rather not think about the Clown.

He makes the mistake of calling Peyton a bitch, and she has zero hesitation in whipping out a knife.

Troy points them to Tony's room, and he's busy squawking a blow up doll, but he decides it's best to go with the angry lady with a knife to look for her brother.

So the four of them head out to the pot plants, and Tony tells Peyton what happened. Peyton is less concerned with the whole unbelievability of a man becoming a clown, and is rather upset that Brad's friends ran away leaving him behind to die.

Elsewhere, Larry wakes up, again, surrounded by his latest victims, still not quite sure what happens during his blackouts.

I really need to stop having anchovies on pizza at 3am.

Peyton heads home, and makes plans, and we cut back over to Larry, who has cleaned up, and freshened up, getting ready for a date, apparently.

Oh, and he's talking with his mom and clownfather. I am starting to think Larry is not well.

Larry's date eventually arrives, and it's Peyton, who secretly works as a prostitute. Don't worry, she's trying to get out, but y'know how it goes. Larry is one of her favourite clients though, because he just wants to talk and act like it's a normal date.

They chat for a bit, Larry tries to get to know "Cherry" a little better, and she mentions she recently lost her brother, according to his stoner buddies, to a man who turned into a clown. Whoops. That's a plot complication.

Larry hastily makes an excuse to end the evening early so he can freak out over what he's done probably, and Peyton leaves.

While Larry murders the vision of his mother, Peyton runs into her pimp, Diablo, who hates that she spends so much time with the old man. Dude, if he pays, you can just chill. Although she seems to be having payment problems anyways, so...

She heads back over to Connor's house to fuck him to relieve some stress, or something, and hey. Dude wants to be with you so much, make HIM pay, I bet he would.

Meanwhile, Larry talks to Dickhead the Clown, and he talks him into needing to take care of Peyton, because she's a loose end if she digs too deep.

As he leaves the art gallery, Tony also happens to be there, and sees the old man. If he had stayed silent, he'd probably be fine. But since Tony is such a dipshit, he shouts out to the guy, and Larry comes over and clowns out, getting in the car.

We all know how this ends; tickling and murder. And Tony pissing himself again.

Only the finest of cinema gets past — Only the finest of cinema gets accepted here.

Following the advice of his scary clownfather, Larry gets the address off Tony, and finds Troy, taking care of him as well.

We are subjected to more tickle torture, until the Clown gets bored of that, and pulls out a gun. Oh no! Oh whew, it's just one of those toy "BANG!" flag guns! ...Until it's not.

So we only have one last thing to take care of, with 20 minutes left, so Larry texts Peyton to meet up, with her having no idea of the wider agenda, she just needs the money.

Uncle Harlan says you’re entitled to your INFORMED opinion!

So Peyton shows up at Larry's in a killer little red dress, and they decide now is the time, and Larry wants to make things special. Suuuure he does.

While Larry does that, Peyton freshens up, but catches a whiff of something fishy. She smells around, opens a closet door, and hey! There's Brad! And a few friends!

She freaks out, as one does when they find three rotting corpses in her boyfriend/john's closet, they fight a bit, and Larry eventually transforms into his clownsona.

Hello… …Hello… …Hello! — Hello…
…Hello…
…Hello!

Peyton manages to run away, and the Clown gives chase.

Connor sees Peyton run out of the apartment complex, into the waiting arms of Diablo, and gets a few bullets flung his way as he screams out to her.

Diablo takes his property to a warehouse, ties her up, and gets ready to set her on fire. Now, this is just bad business. Threaten her a bit, maybe break something, but if you outright *murder her* you ain't getting shit.

This is a little trick I like to call the Dark Phoenix.

As he leaves a trail of gasoline, Diablo realises he doesn't have his matches, so ducks out to find them.

While he's gone, Connor arrives to untie her, but the Lunatic’ler arrives as well, taking over Larry's body, and leading into one WILD fight between him and Connor.

I have returned to you now, at the honking of the tide!

It starts out with fisticuffs, the Clown turns a hammer into a gag hammer (which is somehow worse...look, clown logic, okay??) and then dueling with that and a broom handle.

At one point, Connor does a FUCKING SICK kick flip off the wall that is *wildly* unnecessary, but heckin' awesome.

I'll say this, Connor slash the actor is actually a decent fighter, and this is a solid enough action sequence. Definitely better than you would expect from, well… gestures all around

My only real complaint is, at one point they go into a stand off stance against each other, and because Connor played video games throughout the movie, they do a fight game overlay. If there had been more of this during the movie, maybe, but otherwise it's out of place, in my opinion.

The Clown looks like he's about to lose, until he pauses things, pulls out some balloons, and creates a sword with them, stabbing Connor dead.

He then turns his attention back to Peyton, which to be honest, the focus has shifted a bit too much away from her with this fight. It's some other character fighting for her, and she loses a lot of her agency here.

Peyton's not in a great place, she starts laughing, and folks...this is what a mental breakdown looks like. And can you blame her? A man she was close to murdered almost everyone she knew, he transforms into a wereclown, and her pimp has her tied to a chair and doused in gasoline. If you're gonna have a psychotic break, now is the time.

She tells Larry she hates him, and he just...disappears. Okay, I guess? But yay! She survives, she's kinda untied, I'm sure she can get out of there and live a nice, happy life, after decades of therapy for all of this!

...No wait, Diablo is still in this movie, drops his match, and murders her. So much for a happy ending. We were so close.

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: Looks pretty good, and for a 2010s movie, it sure as shit better.

Audio: Same here.

Body Count: 1 - Almost 14 minutes in, and Brad? gets his throat ripped out.

2 - The Lunatic'ler murders Sam with a quill to the gut, and suffocation

3 - He kills another student apparently by choking with a scarf.

4 - Larry's mom 'dies' in his visions.

5 - The Lunatic'ler kills Troy with feather fingers

6 - Then he gets a tied up Tony and shoots him

7 - Connor gets stabbed with balloon sword

8 - Peyton goes up in flames

Blood Type - C+: A few good splats, but few and far between. And I would’ve liked to see some real clown horror makeup, and not a mask.

Best Corpse: I think the best is the first, with a nice throat slash.

Sex Appeal: Everyone keeps their clothes on, but the guys come close.

Drink Up! Every time Connor plays video games.

Movie Review: This movie…this must have the highest ratio of “absolutely ridiculous plot that sounds terrible” to “but wait, it’s actually well made and good” I have ever seen. You don’t expect much from “wereclown with a tickle fetish murders people” but they actually play it pretty straight, give it some depth, and is fairly well made and acted. It is WAY better than you would expect from that plot, way better than it has any right to be. I have so rarely been this pleasantly surprised. I was expecting something completely ridiculous, and it delivers some of that, but it’s a legit movie, that I was completely entertained with. Four out of five feather fingers.

Entertainment Value: I am just as surprised that it doesn’t quite deliver as much on this side of things, with that plot. Sure, there’s some weirdness, some amusement, but nothing like you’d expect, as they tried to make a real movie. Fortunately, the whole concept is still WTF enough that you can’;t quite believe what you’re watching, and most of the ancillary amusement are from Brad’s friends who are pretty ridiculous. Three out of five crescent moons.