Super Happy Fun Clown (2025)
Director: Patrick Rea
Cast: Jennifer Seward, Nicole Hall, Matt Leisy, Deborah Madick, Tim Shelburne, Violet Rea, Dan Daly, Matt McCann, Brooklyn Funk
Running time: 87 mins
Director Patrick Rea and writer Eric Winkler follow their 2020 werewolf revenge horror I Am Lisa with this entertaining killer clown movie. Taking full advantage of its Halloween setting, it’s chock full of fun movie references, though it’s very light on plot and could probably have done with a bit of fleshing out.
The film begins with a prologue in which killer clown Jenn-o, aka office worker Jennifer Sullivan (Jennifer Seward) has taken a cop (Matt Leisy as Jake) hostage and is facing off with the cop’s partner, Detective Marshall (Nicole Hall), who is poised to shoot. We then flash back 20 years and learn about young Jennifer (Violet Rea), who has a horrible mother (Deborah Madick) and is obsessed with both serial killers and a clown in her local park.
We then jump forward 20 years and follow grown-up Jennifer as she dons her Jenn-o the Clown costume and murders her hateful husband (Dan Daley). When Halloween arrives a couple of weeks later (with her husband still decomposing at the kitchen table), Jenn-o sets out on a proper killing spree, eventually winding up at the Haunted Cinema (which is part Haunted House experience, part cinema), where she murders her way through people dressed as classic monsters.
As killer clowns go, Jenn-o isn’t especially scary, but her unpredictability is decidedly unsettling, particularly when she attends her co-worker Ryan’s (Tim Shelburne) Halloween party. Her relationship with Ryan is the film’s most entertaining aspect and gives the relatively dialogue-free script the majority of its talking scenes, as they jokingly plot to murder their colleagues and discuss their favourite movies.
On that note, Super Happy Fun Clown isn’t afraid to blatantly name-drop its film references. Jennifer cites both 1987’s The Monster Squad (“basically The Goonies, killing classic old Hollywood monsters”) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935) as two of her favourite films, both of which are effectively recreated in the Haunted Cinema sequence later on.
The film’s main problem is that, despite the lengthy childhood flashback scenes, we never really learn why Jennifer is obsessed with serial killers. We know that she sees being a serial killer as a way of becoming famous, but the only hint we have of that in her childhood is her asking her mother who John Wayne Gacy is, seemingly out of nowhere.
Accordingly, the two elements – clown costume, serial killer obsession – aren’t very well fused together in the script, which is a little frustrating. Another issue is that, as with I Am Lisa, there’s a disappointing lack of invention when it comes to the kills. That said, the Frankenstein kill is both original and inspired, but it only makes you wish the same level of thought had gone into the other monster kills.
On the plus side, the performances are engaging. Seward has a sweetness that works well in both Jennifer’s personas, while Hall and Leisy are both good value as the cops. Similarly, Madick is maybe the most monstrous thing in the movie as Jennifer’s mother, and her eventual fate is satisfying as a result. However, another character, that by movie logic absolutely deserves a nasty death, is mysteriously spared, just as Jennifer’s older sister (Rachael Feeley) is given bafflingly little screen time.
Despite its flaws, this is an entertaining killer clown-slash-serial killer horror that succeeds on the strength of its central performance and a couple of nice ideas, but it does occasionally feel like there were some lost opportunities with the script.
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