Review: CLOWN is a Genuinely Disturbing Effort by Jon Watts

It’s hard to believe that a movie like Clown even got made in the first place; the project started out as a fake trailer several years ago, which caught the attention of Eli Roth (because his name was plastered all over it), who then brought the concept to Vertebra Films in hopes of getting the project off the ground for director Jon Watts.

Now, after all this time, Clown has finally arrived in the US via Dimension Films, and while it could have used a little more trimming (especially in the film’s second act), by and large, Watts has crafted a genuinely creepy and disturbing body horror experience unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. I had an immensely good time watching Clown, making it well worth the wait.

Clown follows Kent (Andy Powers), a real estate agent doing his best to juggle a demanding career and his responsibilities to his family. He’s off working on a renovation during his clown-loving son Jack’s (Christian Distefano) birthday party, but gets a call from his frantic wife Meg (Laura Allen), who informs him that the party clown had to cancel on the festivities and that she needs his help right away. Trying to think of the best way to diffuse the potentially party-ruining situation, Kent stumbles across an old chest in the house he’s representing and discovers an antique clown costume, complete with a nose and rainbow-colored wig.

But what starts off as a fun gag that saves Jack’s party becomes a nightmare for Kent, as he wakes up the morning after and realizes he cannot remove any part of the costume whatsoever. At first, he tries to go about his everyday life still wearing the ridiculous get-up, but the longer he dons the suit, wig, and nose, the more panicked Kent becomes, as he learns the dark origins of his new apparel and finally succumbs to the evil and bloodthirsty nature of the costume.

A movie that takes some decidedly dark and horrific turns, Clown is like a mishmash of a body horror story, a pitch-black comedy, and a slasher, making for an often disconcerting experience for viewers. Things start off with a humorous slant as we watch Kent awkwardly deal with his predicament, having to go into his office without anyone noticing him or trying to handle a construction crew with a sense of authority that his outfit cannot possibly provide. But the longer Kent is stuck in the mysterious wardrobe, the more the true horror of the scenario sets in and that’s when Clown evolves into something special.

Often scary and unsettling, Watts does a fantastic job making us care about Kent and his family right off the bat, and the more we see him surrender to his attire throughout Clown, the worse we feel for Kent and his wife and son. These are all good people who are about to have their entire lives destroyed, and as viewers, there’s nothing to laugh at there.

But considering just how much a regular ol’ clown creeps out most of us anyway, Watts and co-writer Christopher Ford smartly infuse their script with a wicked sense of humor that aims to add a little levity to the otherwise bleak modern fable about a man who transforms into a creature that consumes small children (a sequence at a Chuck E. Cheese-esque establishment is a particularly haunting moment in the film that has stuck with me).

The cast itself are all serviceable in Clown and do a solid job with the material, but as suspected, the always larger-than-life Peter Stormare pops up during several scenes as someone with an intimate knowledge of the suit that is now permanently stuck to Kent, and he nearly steals the spotlight away from the rest of Clown’s talented ensemble. There’s also an appropriate amount of gore and goo to be found in Clown, and I absolutely loved the look of the more demonic version of Kent, which was designed by Tony Gardner.

Clown’s biggest issue overall is that for about 20–30 minutes, the film feels like it’s spinning its wheels, never really advancing the story in any way. It starts off incredibly strong and gives us a fantastically intense finale, but in-between, there’s a lot of back-and-forth with Kent, his family, and those he crosses paths with while donning the costume that could have been tightened up to avoid feeling so repetitive and dawdling.

For example, a subplot with a child at a hotel that Kent is hiding out at easily could have been one incredibly powerful scene as opposed to two different moments that are less impactful because they already have a “been there, done that” feeling. A few other scenes are a bit drawn out, too, and we get some unnecessary drama with Meg’s family (we get it, in-laws are the worst) that just drags the story down.

But, issues aside, there are still a lot of great things going on with Clown, and for the most part, genre fans should enjoy this shocking little gem that feels a bit like if Stephen King’s IT, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, and Tales From the Crypt melded together to form a ghastly and disturbing folk tale about the origins of the modern clown. Between Clown and Cop Car, Watts has proven that he certainly has a way with stories about kids in peril, and I must say that after finally getting to see his first feature, I’m curious to see how he parlays his style into the Spider-Man universe.

Movie Score: 3/5