Day 12

Stitches (2012)

Directed by Conor McMahon

Who said we were done with clowns? After a birthday clown is heckled to death by a group of unruly young children, he returns 6 years later to exact his revenge from beyond the grave on these now high-school students. What’s great about Stitches is that it is a horror comedy that delivers on both horror and comedy in spades. While not high-brow, the humor kept us laughing throughout the movie, and this was due in no small part to the excellent comedic timing and styles of (insert actor name here), who was perfect for the part. Part of what makes the humor work so well is that it blends well with the horror, as Stitches uses ‘clown logic’ as his main weapon while crafting ironic deaths for the children who tormented him. As a callback to his demise, Stitches kills one of the teens by fashioning a balloon animal out of a kids’ intestines, among other amusing kills. The kids are also very good, especially when the movie highlights how this traumatic event has uniquely changed everyone present. Also, there is an awesome clown mythology to the film, including sequel-bait for a movie that I now desperately want to see.

There are a few problems here. There’s a bit too much of an attempt to be edgy sometimes, specifically there is a scene where a cat is killed and it isn’t funny and doesn’t have any connection to anything, it just makes you feel bad. This may not be a negative for everyone but many scenes, particularly the ones set at high school are full of cringe humor, which is very divisive but works well if you enjoy it. Also the ending is infuriatingly neat and tidy, with an unsatisfying subplot that feels very much like wish fulfillment and consequences that seem non-existent. Still, even though the movie has problems, if you have some drinks and some friends it is a hilarious darkly comic romp that we highly recommend.