Horror Movie Review: The Crescent Moon Clown (2018)

How is this still a thing? How on earth is this series of low-budget found-footage horror films become a franchise? It boggles the mind that The Crescent Moon Clown is the fifth entry in the Bad Ben film series.

A series that started off ok but has given diminishing returns almost as fast as they have been pumped out. We had the original Bed Ben in 2016 (read our review here), the follow-up Steelmanville Road in 2017 (read our review here) and the supposed final chapter called Badder Ben: The Final Chapter that same year (read our review here).

Then we had Bad Ben: The Mandela Effect released in 2018 (read our review here) which brings us to The Crescent Moon Clown also released in 2018.

If the Bad Ben series had ended at three, we’d probably talk a lot more positively about it. Especially about writer/director/actor Nigel Bach who has spun these films into a franchise with next to no money. Credit where credit is due, that’s no mean feat.

However, he just won’t leave it alone and to say this series has run out of gas is an understatement.

So here we go again. Back to the Steelmanville Road house where we meet Renee (Jetta Tionne Anderson) and not Bach’s Tom Riley. Although he does pop in later on of course.

She is spending her first night alone at the infamous house while her parents are away. If you’ve seen a Bad Ben movie before or any found-footage haunted house movie before, you know what happens next.

If you’re expecting scares, this is not the movie for you. What The Crescent Moon Clown does is so basic and poorly thought-out that it wouldn’t scare a child. That is the film’s major flaw although the story is hardly anything to write home about either.

Slow. That’s the word that constantly comes up while watching. It drags and drags, made all the worse considering this also one of the longer Bad Ben movies. At over 80 minutes long, The Crescent Moon Clown is an absolute chore to get through.

The one positive that can be thrown at it is the earnest performance of Jetta Tionne Anderson. She tries, she really does and her character is likeable but she’s not up to the task of holding the movie on her own.

If you’re not already sick and tired of these films already, this will be one too much for most. Even if it’s not the worst entry in the franchise but that’s hardly glowing praise.