Charlie Shaw’s Revenge review – creepy clown killer takes aim at struggling amusement park

The film opens with a lone figure striding into the foreground. He’s an amateur entertainer on his way to a gig, and he’s not been met at the station as planned. Still, not to worry – a car pulls up, and he gets in. But needless to say, his days (indeed, his minutes) are numbered. The murder that goes down in short order features plenty of blood but somehow fails to terrify the viewer. This is a problem unfortunately not limited to the opening scene: despite the various gruesome killings on show, there’s not much in the way of scares.

The plot involves an adventure park in danger of going out of business, with the band of workers trying to get the place back on track providing plenty of fodder for a killer who spends some of the time dressed as a creepy clown. It’s easy to be dismissive of demon-clown films like Terrifier but they are effective in what they seek to do. Charlie Shaw’s Revenge isn’t – partly because the performances generally land some distance short of plausible, and partly because the writing itself 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.)

Horror movies don’t have to be scary, of course – some get away with just being disgusting, or funny, or unnerving. Unfortunately, Charlie Shaw’s Revenge doesn’t 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 was a student’s graduation project, it would show promise – but judged by the standards of professional entertainment, this is, alas, well under par.