IT: Chapter Two

"IT: Chapter Two" (2019, Andy Muschietti, New Line Cinema, Double Dream, Vertigo Entertainment, Rideback, Warner Bros. Pictures) is the sequel to 2017's "IT" based on Stephen King's classic, "IT".


It's 2016 and we return to Derry, Maine to witness the violent and upsetting end of a man called Adrian in front of his boyfriend, Don. Adrian's death, however, does piqué the interest of our friend, and long time Derry man, Mike Hanlon (Isaiah Mustafa) who has been diligently (read 'obsessively') scanning the newspapers and airwaves for any sign that Pennywise has returned to feast on the people of the town once more.


Mike contacts the members of the Loser's Club one by one and finds that they have all but forgotten him due to the creature's defences. Reluctantly, they mostly agree to return to the town, but they're a little fuzzy on why...


Losers Club leader, Bill (James McAvoy), has become a successful writer and is working on a film based on one of his books. Richie (Bill Hader) is a successful comedian. Beverly (Jessica Chastain) has swapped her relationship with her abusive father for an abusive, but wealthy, husband. Eddie (James Ransone) has put his hypochondria to good use and become a successful risk assessor. Stanley (Andy Bean) is happily married and working as an accountant. And Ben (Jay Ryan) has buffed up and become a successful architect.


The gang head back to Derry, minus one, and as, their memories start to return, so do their fears. The creature begins almost instantly to launch an attack on the, now adult, Losers Club as well as getting their old childhood bully, Henry Bowers (Teach Grant) back in town to further hamper the Club's attempts to put a stop to It once and for all.


I enjoyed the first instalment, but feel that the second chapter flowed better as a film and had slightly better pacing than its predecessor. The younger casting had been so strong that I had been apprehensive as to how the adult casting would compare, but I felt that they were extremely well matched and I had no issues believing them to be the adult versions of the younger actors. Bill Hader particularly, steals the show somewhat with an emotional portrayal of motor-mouth Richie. The Losers are all broken as adults, and we feel for them all.


Bill Skarsgård gives just as excellent performance as Pennywise the Dancing Clown as he did in the first film. Although the film relies perhaps a little too heavily on CGI to achieve all the effects, which makes sense when you have a shapeshifting, human eating monster on the loose, the most effective part of the monster is Skarsgård's disturbing and engaging performance. There is a scene with the clown make up mostly removed which further solidifies how effective his performance is.


The film is punctuated with humour, much like its predecessor, and then plummets to some serious lows (I won't deny feeling a little tearful near the end) but overall sticks to the Losers conquering evil themes of the novel. We also enjoy one of Stephen King's cameos as a pawnshop owner who sells Bill back his old bike.


Although three hours is a long run time, if you enjoyed the first film, you are unlikely to be disappointed by the follow up. But equally, if you disliked the previous instalment it's unlikely that this film will swing you in another direction.

[Image: Warner Bros. Pictures, et al]

Hani

IT (2017)

"IT" aka "IT: Chapter One" (2017, Andy Muschietti, New Line Cinema, RatPac-Dune Entertainment, Vertigo Entertainment, Lin Pictures, KatzSmith Productions, Warner Bros. Pictures) is based on Stephen King's amazing novel of the same name.

On a stormy day, Bill (Jaeden Lieberher) gives his little brother, Georgie (Jackson Robert Scott), a sailboat made of paper to play with outside. But, when innocent little Georgie's sailboat floats down a storm drain, he makes the acquaintance of Pennywise the Dancing Clown (Bill Skarsgård) and meets a gruesome end. For Bill and his band of misfit friends, however, it is just the beginning as he tries to find out what happened to his baby brother, and they are all taunted by IT...

What a thrilling experience it was to see a horror film in a cinema and actually get a few scares! I had been apprehensive as Tim Curry's rendition of Pennywise is so iconic that I couldn't imagine anyone else in the role, but Skarsgård has really made this version of the clown creature his own. Not only is he bitter-sweet, off-balanced and straight up freaky, but he's also so well designed. The clown is just different enough to mark this character as a whole new imagining.

The film stays pretty close to King's masterpiece, and although obviously not every plot point could be squeezed into the run time, I didn't feel that it was rushed or lost any of the pacing. Of course, we still have the next part of the book to cover, and, having now seen the first instalment, I have high hopes for the second battle.

The 80s vibe and styling is excellently achieved. From the clothing to the background advertising, it feels very authentic. I'm really enjoying the 80s love at the moment.

The Losers Club are perfect. All the actors give such a great, realistic performance and bring the roles to life. I can only hope their adult counterparts in the next movie can continue with such style. The characters in this story have such horrid background stories and face some traumatic situations and the movie does well to lighten the tone with some humour now and again. This also just makes the darker scenes all the more cutting.

Aside from leading man, Bill, who gives a fantastic performance and holds the club together, we are joined by Bev (Sophia Lillis); lone girl of the group who, as well as being bullied relentlessly at school also has a traumatic and horrifying home life. Ben (Jeremy Ray Taylor); love sick, overweight romantic who is also the new kid at school. Richie (Finn Wolfhard); a motormouth who masks his own personal demons with humour and crassness. He's also a face you'll recognise from "Stranger Things" (and he really proves his mettle with a quite radically different and equally iconic character). Stan (Wyatt Olef); a quiet, smart Jewish kid who manages to get a good few quips in when Richie takes a breath. His father is the local Rabbi and he feels under pressure to make him proud. Mike (Chosen Jacobs); a home-schooled kid raised by his grandfather after his parents met a grissly end. He doesn't want to be an outsider, but equally he isn't sure if he wants to join the others when he knows what he's let himself in for. And, Eddie (Jack Dylan Grazer); a hypochondriac fuelled by his mother's blatant Munchhausen's by-proxy.

Keeping the Losers Club terrified even before Pennywise awakens, we have the local gang of bullies, led by Henry Bowers (Nicholas Hamilton), son of a local cop who constantly belittles him, Henry feels like he has to terrorise others to make himself feel more like a man.

While Skarsgård's Pennywise does a fair bit more chatting that Tim Curry's did, the film benefits from taking more from the book and enjoys some truly disturbing images. The scares are frequent, quick paced and effective and the plot moves along smoothly.

All in all, it was my most satisfying cinema trip in some time!

[Image: Warner Bros. Pictures, et al]

Hani

The Night Watchmen

"The Night Watchmen" (2017, Mitchell Altieri, Contender Films, Indie Entertainment, Studio BOH) is about a vampire outbreak in an office block all started by the miss-delivered corpse of a famous clown....

Ken (Ken Arnold), Jiggetts (Kevin Jiggetts) and Luca (Dan DeLuca) are night security guards for a large office block. They are joined by a new rookie (Max Gray Wilbur) for his first day on the job.

Aside from oogling Karen (Kara Luiz) on the monitors and consistently forgetting to acknowledge Penny (Diona Reasonover), the guys' job seems to pretty much consist of playing cards and eating. That is, until they receive the unusual delivery of a coffin by mistake containing a deceased, famous clown. Unfortunately, the dead clown doesn't stay that way for long and swiftly fills the building with a horde of ferocious vampires!

An epic battle ensues, but can our unlikely heroes actually save the day?

A fun film with a so-bad-it's-good vibe that really hits the mark. The banter between the characters, who were surprisingly well-rounded considering the genre, is entertaining and the action is gory, silly and well paced. The film is a perfect party movie, not overstaying its welcome and containing angry, zombie-esque vampire clowns.

Definitely worth a shot.

[Image: Contender Films, et al]

Hani

Krampus

"Krampus" (2015, Michael Dougherty, Legendary Pictures, Zam Pictures) is a Christmas horror about St. Nicholas' demonic counterpart, Krampus.

Tom (Adam Scott), Sarah (Toni Collette) and their kids, Beth (Stefania LaVie Owen) and Max (Emjay Anthony) are preparing for Christmas at home with Tom's mother (Krista Stadler). Sarah's sister, Linda (Allison Tolman) also visits with her brash husband, Howard (David Koechner), their new baby and other, older, rude children, Stevie (Lolo Owen), Jordan (Queenie Samuel) and Howie Jr. (Maveick Flack). They also bring Sarah's disapproving, demanding aunt (Conchata Ferrell). As the night progresses, Max begins to feel that the Christmasses of his childhood are over and, in his anger, he unwittingly unleashes Krampus on his family...

The film starts out very much like any other non-horror Christmas movie. Then, the horror aspects are introduced with cheesy relish. The cast are good, the action is silly, but fun and the film delivers a good holiday horror that doesn't try to take itself very seriously. The result is a film which isn't especially scary, but manages to deliver a fun holiday romp which feels a little like "National Lampoons' Christmas Vacation" meets "The Demonic Toys", but with better production value.

Definitely one I'll be watching again.

[Image: Legendary Pictures]

Hani

31

"31" (2016, Rob Zombie, Bow + Arrow Entertainment, PalmStar Media, Protagonist Pictures, Spectacle Entertainment Group, Windy Hill Pictures, Saban Films) is the latest Rob Zombie horror picture.

A group of carnival workers are travelling in their van on Halloween morning 1976 when they are captured by a group of mysterious people and are then forced to play a "Running Man"-esque survival game called "31" (after the date). The aim of the game is to survive for 12 hours while battling murderous, torture-obsessed maniacs with clown paint on, wielding weapons. The game appears to be for the amusement (and gambling interests) of a group of madcap aristocrats lead by Malcolm McDowell.

The film has the same chaotic feeling that most of Rob Zombie's film enjoy with sudden scenes of violence split by scenes of random banter between the characters. However, the overall effect is less easy to follow than his previous films with a major flaw for me being there were so many characters to begin with, especially since it became apparent that a lot of these characters weren't required and are quickly lost in the confusing capture scene. There wasn't enough personality built up around these surplus characters to make them an emotional loss either, so I didn't feel their demise to be of any significance.

The settings are familiar: dusty back roads of America, big empty warehouse... The jump from one to the other is jarring and seems almost like 2 separate films. Zombie has also paid homage to Rocky Horror, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and other genre favourites, but some scenes seem more like replication than actual homage.

The action and kill scenes are good viewing, but our protagonists leap a little too easily into the roles of survival killing machines against supposed professional maniacs. The villains are colourful but would have benefited from some more screen time.

I did really enjoy main villain, Doom Head (Richard Brake), who, although very chatty, had a really effective menace to his character on top of being very violent and giving a good monologue.

As did Zombie's "The Devil's Rejects", "31" features a good group of familiar and established cult and genre faces including Meg Foster (she of the mesmerising eyes in "They Live" and more recently, "Pretty Little Liars") amongst a cast of many others. The acting is good, but the style of scripting sometimes makes the aforementioned banter seem less comfortable between characters.

All in all, it will certainly not be overtaking "House of 1000 Corpses" as my favourite Rob Zombie film and suffers from a few pitfalls, but it had the gore and action to bring it back.

[Image: Bow + Arrow Entertainment, et al]

Hani

All Hallow's Eve

"All Hallow's Eve" (2013, Damien Leone, Ruthless Pictures) is a supernatural slasher about a killer clown and a VHS tape. With Halloween just around the corner, I thought I'd start looking at some films I haven't seen before.

Sarah (Katie Maquire) is babysitting Tia (Sydney Freihofer) and her brother Timmy (Cole Mathewson) on Halloween night. We all know that's a bad idea for a start. Timmy opens his trick or treat loot to find that some strange neighbour has put a VHS tape in instead of sweets. Sarah is obviously keen to check the tape's contents before letting the kids watch it. Personally, I would have just put that creepy shit in the bin, but whatever.

The tape turns out to be an anthology of murders which all feature Art the Creepy Clown (Mike Giannelli) in some way or other. Thinking it's just a somewhat disturbing movie, Sarah gives in and lets the kids watch some of it before putting them to bed. But Art the clown makes a special guest appearance later that night, with some unhappy results...

Art the clown was first invented for a short film called "The 9th Circle" in 2008 and was again seen in another short called "Terrifier" in 2011. He's a pretty creepy character, but the film doesn't do him justice as it's just not scary enough to make the most of him.

The film itself isn't awful by any means, but there are long boring stretches and the lack of dialogue in large segments of film, while mostly effective, result in a loss of interest from the viewer after a while. The subject matter is violent and gory with most of the action centering on the depraved clown who just seems to hate lone women and want to hurt them.

There are some really disturbing scenes and some good practical effects, considering the film's low budget. I particularly appreciated the beginning to the end of the wraparound plot, which is by far the best part of the film. Unfortunately, some other effects and costumes are much less effective (I'm sure I could get a more convincing alien costume in 'Poundland') and lose some of the viewer's engagement.

The whole VHS tape thing is becoming a trope of its own and I couldn't review this film without obviously comparing it to "The Ring" series and "V/H/S", which both enjoy much more scares than this one does, but also bigger budgets. One thing that "All Hallow's Eve" did do quite well was slowly make the babysitter's environment more menacing as the film went on.

They've tried to give the film a gritty, video tape vibe with some muting of colours etc. Each segment has a different post-production hue, which I liked.

So, it's not a masterpiece. I'm not a huge fan of torture-porn films and the low budget hindered some of the film's effectiveness. The overall linkage of the shorts is pretty sketchy, the actual shorts themselves are not great and some of the action is more funny or just gross than scary. But it shows a lot of potential from Damien Leone as his full length debut and Art the clown is truly very creepy.

[Image: Ruthless Pictures]

Hani

Clown

"Clown" (2014, Jon Watts, Cross Creek Pictures, Vertebra Films, PS 260, Zed Filmworks, Eli Roth) is about a father (Andy Powers) who finds an old clown costume in a house he is selling and wears it to his son's birthday party so as not to disappoint him when the real clown cancels.

But, when he tries to remove the costume, it won't budge, having fused to his skin. Every attempt to remove it fails, even when his wife uses some tools to remove the nose.... He seeks the help of Karlsson (Peter Stormare), who tells him that it is not a clown suit, but the skin of a child-eating clown-like demon that is now possessing him.

I liked this film. At only 1hr 40 minutes long it doesn't outstay its welcome and the acting, special effects are story are all excellent. It's also very well paced and suitably dark.

There's some gore and some tropes, but not so many that I'd complain, and some nice demon book imagery. This film also doesn't shy away from some disturbing scenes involving scary clowns, sharp objects and children. so be warned.

I also really, really appreciated the subtle changes in the look of the suit as the film progressed as it became less of an outfit and more skin like. Very well put together.

I recommend.

[image: Cross Creek Pictures]

Hani

Stitches

"Stitches" (2012, Conor McMahon, Fantastic Films, Tailored Films, MPI Media Group, Irish Film Board) is a British and Irish revenge 'comedy' horror starring comedian Ross Noble as an undead clown, back to reap revenge on the child bullies who brought about his demise now that they are all fornicating teens.

I'm perhaps biased as I find Ross Noble to be less than funny at the best of times, but this gross out film didn't strike a chord with me at all.

While the gore is commendable, inventive and fun, its cartoon-like quality detracts from any scares that could have taken place and Nobel's foul-mouthed, grimy, burnout clown lacks the charisma of most speaking-part slasher killer characters.

The film doesn't feel like a horror or a comedy, and the rude, brash 'humour' is just slapstick and bad language. I'm Scottish, believe me bad language doesn't bother me, but the scriptwriters seemed to be using it here instead of actual comedy.

While the acting cannot be faulted, the hollow plot doesn't create the fun 80s feeling I was hoping for.

Trashy and unfunny... But there's heaps of blood and bodily explosions, if that's what you want. But I bet it read better as a story board, really.

[Image: Fantastic Films]

Hani

Bloody Cuts : Stitches

"Stitches" (Ben Kent, Ben Franklin, Jonny Franklin, Joel Morgan) is another short from Bloody Cuts' horror anthology.

This one is not for the Coulrophobics out there! A babysitter finds more than she bargains for when sitting for the child of a couple who collect figures and toys.

Nicely set up and only 5 minutes or so long, this one is really a one trick pony of a film, but providing you go in open minded I'm sure you'll be pleased.

[Image: www.bloodycuts.co.uk]

Hani

Killer Klowns from Outer Space

"Killer Klowns from Outer Space" (1988, Stephen Chiodo, Mach Studios, Trans World Entertainment, Chiodo Brothers Productions) does exactly what it says on the tin! It's a movie about alien space creatures who resemble clowns, coming to earth to kill people. This purposefully-so-bad-it's-good spoof is a real winner for the title alone!

Completely nuts, self-aware and cheesy this film is everything you want it to be! If you don't want to watch 'Klowns' killing people with popcorn, circus-themed alien weaponry and drinking dead people with crazy straws, then I would only recommend you watch a film other than this one.

Featuring all of the above, plus the plucky young couple, Mike (Grant Cramer) and Debbie (Suzanne Snyder), our intrepid hero police officer Dave (John Allen Nelson) and moaning, old, useless officer Mooney (John Vernon), Killer Klowns delivers the goods in this funny, pastiche, low-budget comedy horror.

While you could argue that it's a one trick pony, or in this case a one joke plot, I didn't find that this mattered as the film was entertaining and well made. The props were pretty good actually for a low budget comedy, and the feel of the film was professional and well executed.

If you're in the mood for some crazed circus laughs this film could be the right one for you!

Not one for the Coulrophobics out there, though! 

[Image: Chiodo Brothers Productions]

 

Hani

Secrets Of The Clown

"Secrets Of The Clown" (2007, Ryan Badalamenti, Brain Damage Films, Badman Productions) is, in essence, a killer clown movie.

Bobby (Paul Pierro) feels that he is being haunted by a spirit after the brutal murder of his friend Jim (Jay O'Connor) in his house. His girlfriend, Val (Kelli Clevenger), has also become very distant and oddly protective of her toy clown doll. Soon other friends of Bobby begin to be killed off. Could the clown be responsible?

Dun. Dun. Duuhhhhhhhnn!

Sounds ok, doesn't it? A little schlocky, maybe. Well, it's a low budget attempt so I would be inclined to forgive the sometimes shaky camera work and I was expecting crappy gore. But the first scene is very promising! And the musical score is pretty well put together.

However, the dialogue is painful and truthfully, badly executed by wooden acting. It references 'Ghostbusters' and 'South Park', but the lines aren't very funny. And, although character stereotypes are set up, the characters are just not full enough for any audience sympathy. But I'm used to this in B-movies, so I wasn't expecting much anyway.

The plot is confusing, jumpy and seems uncertain of what's going on and there are a lot of dream sequences that, although sometimes actually creepy, don't do much for the story. It was like Badalamenti couldn't decide if he wanted the bad guy to be a clown, a ghost, a demon or witches. It makes little sense and by half way through the film I just didn't really care any more!

The characters are not likeable, and although the clown make up is good, considering the meagre budget this film must have had, he's not really used to his full potential.

The gore is surprisingly good for B-movie-dom, but it's not quite "Murder Party" impressive (another terribly wooden film). And I didn't understand where some of the blood splatters were from, especially in the car scene. But that's not really a bad thing in a slasher!

There are a lot of topless women in this film, so I suppose that would save it for some people. There's also a sexy nurse and a shower scene. So, if you're looking for boobs, this could be right up your street. 

But it's not scary, it's not clever and it's indecisive as to which horror-sub-genre it wants to be in. Cheesy, but not in the good way.

[Image: Brain Damage Films & Badman Productions]

 

Hani