Charlie Shaw’s Revenge, a horror film about a clown killer targeting a struggling amusement park, has decent effects and a late-stage twist but fails to deliver scares, disgust, or laughs. The gore-fest, which opens with a lone entertainer being murdered shortly after getting into a car, suffers from implausible performances and thin writing.
A bloody opening that fails to terrify
The film begins with a lone figure striding into the foreground. He is an amateur entertainer on his way to a gig and has not been met at the station as planned. A car pulls up, and he gets in, but his minutes are numbered. The murder that follows features plenty of blood but somehow fails to terrify the viewer.
This problem is not limited to the opening scene. Despite the various gruesome killings on show, there is not much in the way of scares throughout the film.
Plot and performances fall short
The plot involves an adventure park in danger of going out of business. The band of workers trying to get the place back on track provides plenty of fodder for a killer who spends some of the time dressed as a creepy clown.
Demon-clown films like Terrifier are easy to dismiss, but they are effective in what they seek to do. Charlie Shaw’s Revenge is not, partly because the performances generally land some distance short of plausible and partly because the writing is painfully thin. The effects work, on the other hand, is decent, and the use of real locations with real animals is very welcome in a film-making era of green screen and expensive but hastily cobbled together CGI.
A familiar twist and a promising but under-par result
Horror movies do not have to be scary, of course – some get away with just being disgusting, or funny, or unnerving. Unfortunately, Charlie Shaw’s Revenge does not hit any of these marks either. Its most successful element is a late-stage twist, which works pretty well, though it will feel familiar to viewers of a certain 2003 French slasher.
If this were a student’s graduation project, it would show promise – but judged by the standards of professional entertainment, it is, alas, well under par. Charlie Shaw’s Revenge is at Odeon Southend-on-Sea on 5 October, then tours.
