Horror Movie Review: Stitches (2012)

A horror comedy about a killer clown starring stand-up comedian, Ross Noble…what could possibly be bad about a movie like that!?

Ross Noble is Stitches the clown, a foul looking, rude & obnoxious man who is interrupted shagging his girlfriend to go do a job. The job is Tom’s birthday at his family home with his friends. The kids are a nightmare & Stitches is a pretty bad clown. The kids keep playing pranks on him until one goes horribly wrong resulting in Stitches being accidently killed in front of the children. Tom comes off the worse during this as he gets covered in Stitches blood.

Later Tom visits Stitches grave & witnesses an ancient clown ritual that ends with him being told by the head clown that a clown who didn’t finish the party can never rest. It’s more of a threat then a statement…

6 years later & all the kids go to the same school but haven’t kept the same relationships they had when younger. Tom still suffers from what happened with Stitches & has become a withdrawn loner. His only friends are constantly trying to get him to come out of his shell & make a move on the girl he likes, Kate.

After seeing the opportunity to get Kate to his house the same weekend his mother is away Tom agrees to have his first birthday party since the Stitches incident. Initially the plan is to have just a few friends over but his friends end up inviting most of the school including a lot of people that don’t really like Tom.

The night of the party one of Tom’s invitations floats its way over to Stitches grave & is grabbed by his zombie hand. Stitches is back & it’s finally time to finish the party he started all those years ago.

What ensues is a game of cat & mouse throughout the house as Stitches hunts down each of the children that caused his death. He wants revenge in the goriest way possible with a side of slapstick. Seriously….the death scenes are just so much fun. From ice-cream brain balls to inflatable balloon guts Stitches has a novel way of dealing out the damage as well as having a groan-worthy list of puns.

In the make-up Ross Noble isn’t naturally obvious although the accent does grate a little bit but he manages to come across intimidating with a sympathetic edge. The kids are horrible to him at the start of the movie & they are totally responsible for his death. As 16/17 year olds a few of them are extremely obnoxious & you end up wanting to see Stitches take them out.

For 80 minutes the movie really does a great job of being entertaining & interesting but the final 20 really let it down. The surviving cast are in no real danger of dying as Stitches decides to become dumber as an evil being. His early kills saw him pretty much not messing about with arms being ripped off & umbrellas stabbed through eyes but when it gets to the end he starts knocking the last few characters out & then waiting for them come round before trying to kill them…it’s really poorly done.

Unsurprisingly the movie ends with a sequel-bait…don’t they always but its mixed in with some black comedy that works pretty well.

It’s a lot of fun with inventive deaths, awful puns & some great use of gore. Its final 20 minutes take the edge off an enjoyable watch but not enough for me to dislike the movie. Who would have thought a horror starring Ross Noble would have been pretty good?