Stitches (2012)

Bad clowns are all over the place in movies, but I don't remember seeing such horrid prepubescent children in a clown movie. Rude, swearing and disrespectful, they should have been slashed then and there before leaving Tommy's 10th birthday party. But, traditional slasher movies require teenage victims, so the children grew to be rude, swearing and disrespectful teenagers before being gruesomely and hilariously murdered by Stitches, the evil ghost clown. 

Graveyards are all over the place in horror movies as well, but the graveyard in Stitches was a really cool one; very old, but pretty well maintained with a Gothic stone tower toward the back. What would be housed in a Gothic stone tower protected by an iron gate secured with a padlock that looks like a clown's face? The ritual place of the clown coven or cult and the raw eggs which hold the essence of each clown's soul, of course. 

As the recently risen from the grave Stitches makes his way around the house during Tommy's 16th birthday party sniffing out his victims with the help of his animated red clown nose, he gruesomely twists each killing to mirror the child's despicable behavior at the original party. Very creative, darkly vengeful and plenty of spraying blood and dismemberment. The umbrella as a weapon killing and the "balloon" animal slow kill are over the top gruesome yet funny and really took a lot of creative thinking to pull off.

Typical of teenage slasher movies, we know from the beginning who the hero is and who will probably survive, which allows for the super funny tricycle chase. As humans, there are times when we really want to see our enemies suffer a slow painful death, preferably by the means they used to wrong us in the past. In fact, Stitches' payback killings reminded me of fantasies I've had in the past of seeking revenge on those who have wronged me, or in my adolescent PMS days, simply pissed me off. Of course, common sense and compassion always won out and fantasies are meant to be fleeting, but demonic clowns, risen from hell or the grave or wherever demonic clowns go after death, thrive on chaos and destruction, kill with glee and utter a hilarious remark to cap it off.