Once again facing redundancy from a bill paying job, I am reminded why I started this blog. Films in general are all about escapism for the most part, and horror films fit into that perfectly. For the average person, no matter how bad the real world is for them, it doesn't compare to the fantastical horrors that can be found within the world of movies. I often judge films more on how well they are able to create the distanced feeling of leaving the world for a bit, and with the Patrick Rea (They Wait in the Dark) directed and Eric Winkler written clown slasher - Super Happy Fun Clown, you have a horror that successfully achieves that. This was based on the 2023 short film of the same name, that also featured Jennifer Seward (The Stylist) in the leading role.
Jennifer (Seward, credited solely as 'Super Happy Fun Clown') has had a hard and disappointing life. Raised by a cold and abusive mother, married to an abusive dead beat husband, and stuck in a dead end office job, the only relief she gets is when she goes 'clowning'. Obsessed with clowns from a young age, she has created the persona 'Jenn-O the Clown', in her spare time going to the local park where she entertains the children there. As she has gotten older, she has also developed an unhealthy fascination with serial killers and classic movie monsters. These three disparate things come together one year, when Jennifer finally snaps and decides to plan something really memorable for Halloween that will give her the fame she has been searching for her whole life.
The film begins with an exciting flashforward prologue, in which Jennifer dressed up like a clown, is holding a detective at gunpoint, while his partner demands she let him go. The film then leaps back twenty years, with the majority of the movie then showing how events got to that desperate stage. The part set in the early 2000s is only the first act, and doesn't take up too much of the 87 minute runtime, but it is key in showing both the protagonists early fixation on clows, but also how demanding and impossible to please her mother is. The time skip to the movie's present day works well in filling in the blanks of what has happened to Jennifer in the years following that. Being a mute clown, you could be forgiven for thinking this is just a film that is trying to ride on the coattails of Terrifier's wild success, but this clown is treated suitably different, mainly in that Jennifer has a life outside of dressing up. Her type is based on mute clowns, something that she sticks to resolutely when in her get-up. So far so Art, but the difference is that she is a normal, and even dull person when not in the make-up. It seemed Ying and Yang, with Jennifer miserable and meek, but the bright and colourful persona she has created seems to breathe life into her whenever she changes.
The film doesn't entirely focus on this damaged person, with the detectives from the prologue getting their own much smaller side story, basically of being bored working in a small town, and not expecting much excitement to happen. I initially thought Nicole Hall (VY) and Matt Leisy (The Friend) were too young in age to be playing the role of detectives, but then realised that it is me that is old now rather than them being too young! I enjoyed their rapport with each other, and it became a cool combination in the third act when Jennifer is fully on her murder-spree, and the detectives are shown constantly one step behind as they try and locate her.
There was a bit of an odd feel with adult Jennifer's early scenes. Her clowning is shown via montages that have stripped back guitar music to them, and the repeated scenes of her heading back home and attempting to entertain her miserable husband while still in character had a slight arthouse feel to it. Her kills when they begin are wild and varied in the way that slasher killers' kills often are. Strangulation, gunshot, vehicular homicide are just a few of the methods she uses. The killer isn't a threatening character, Jennifer isn't hulking or sinister, but this becomes one of her advantages, as she is able to get close to her victims without them suspecting anything is wrong. The kill scenes are never over the top, but they use special effects to great...effect, such as showing a hole going all the way through someone's head after they are shot, and another victim flailing around while on fire.
I had a super happy fun time with Super Happy Fun Clown. It was nice to have a movie maniac that had a very human side to them. She may have killed innocents, but she wasn't unlikeable, and that isn't to say I was rooting for the sexually repressed killer, but the film does a good enough job of explaining the experiences that created her, and it is always nice to give females the chance to be evil. With fun kills, good pacing, and decent special effects, this worked as escapism, and so gets a rotted thumbs up from me. Super Happy Fun Clown streams exclusively on streaming platform Bloodstream from January 1st.
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