I’m always up for a scary clown movie, but was this just a run-of-the-mill triple feature? Let’s find out.
THE CURSE OF THE CLOWN MOTEL (2023)
Some well-known names somehow made it into this mess of a movie that never decides if it wants to be about a vengeful Native American entity or creepy clowns. One thing is for sure – it’s definitely a clown show.
In the Old West saloon opener, hottie Randy Couture scores a brief role as a cowboy who gets killed by a magical Native American man, whose face paint I presume is supposed to resemble that of a clown. Randy’s last words are something to the effect of “You haven’t seen the last of me”. Yet…we never see Randy again.
In modern times, Tobin Bell owns a clown-themed motel in the desert. Don’t ask me why anyone would come to a clown motel in the middle of nowhere, but a group of business people does.
Also present is a young Native American woman who wants to reclaim the sacred land of her people from Tobin, who has been exploiting it by…running a clown motel business on it?
Meanwhile, Richard Grieco is moping around, and I think he’s supposed to be another Native American working with the main girl’s grandmother to unleash that magical Native American man from the beginning. I don’t know why Grieco is even in the movie, and I don’t think he does either.
At one point it appears that a life size clown in the gift shop (?) is alive, but there’s no payoff to that moment, so the whole clown aspect is basically dropped. The Native American man is brought back somehow, kills a few of the guests, shoots electric magic from his mouth, and lurks inside mirrors and paintings on walls. It’s never clear who he’s mad at or trying to get revenge on, because he just kills random guests.
The first of the few major kills comes at about an hour in, and while the death scenes are nice and gory, there aren’t enough of them, and the nastiest part of one of them is blocked by…get this…CGI fricking blood on the camera lens. What? Despite that, it’s still the best scene in the movie.
I won’t even try to explain the main girl’s final battle with the Native American man, because, well, I can’t explain it.
VAMPIRE CLOWN (2025)
Hunky Tyhr Trubiak of Tempus Tormentum is the lead here, and he could charm the pants off me. He carries the quirky tone of Vampire Clown perfectly with his humorous himbo performance. The desolate country town setting also adds to the overall weird vibe, and the film felt to me like a throwback to 1960s horror in which residents of a little town are taken over by the unknown.
In this case, the unknown is a vampire clown. Tyrh, a man who is questioning his worthiness, learns his neighbors are being found dead in their homes.
He begins to suspect something strange is going on, especially when locals start appearing during the day in surgical masks while behaving all distant and comatose. It’s quite creepy, and the eerie feel is only hindered by the whimsical tone whenever the actual vampire clown comes around.
Tyrh rides around on his bicycle trying to figure out what’s happening to his town, which benefits his little guy as hero persona as he uncovers the truth. Eventually, he and his girlfriend have to team up with her ex to stop the vampires once and for all, which is when the movie really hits its dry comedy stride.
It’s small in scope and low in budget, but it’s filled with heart, and I enjoyed the heck out of it.
DO YOU SEE ME? (2017)
The question should be, do you want to see Do You See Me?? I was so drawn in by the establishing minutes of this clown movie. The opener is a gruesomely atmospheric “skin mask” kill, and then we learn it’s right before Halloween, which lands this one on the holiday horror page. Yay!
We meet our main girl, recently divorced and bickering with her incredibly cute husband over ownership of their home.
She also has tension with her mother during phone conversations, has a sister with strong opinions about what she’s doing wrong in her life, and is regularly bothered by a dude at the gym who can’t take the hint that she’s not interested in him. Was the goal here to create a list of suspects who might have it out for the main girl? Not sure.
The possibility of attending Halloween parties hovers in the background, but that’s about as far as Halloween gets. There’s one trip to a store for some costume shopping, but there’s absolutely no Halloween atmosphere here—no pumpkins, no decor, no fall leaves. Bummer.
Anyway, our main girl keeps spotting a clown lurking around wherever she goes, and those sightings are often accompanied by her receiving a simple text message: Do you see me?
There’s such an intriguing and suspenseful feel to the film…at first. However, pretty soon it just keeps making promises it doesn’t keep. It becomes repetitive, and you begin to wonder if the clown is all in the main girl’s imagination. He doesn’t target anyone else. He doesn’t kill anyone. He never actually chases the main girl. Yawn.
And then, in the final moments, there are suddenly several clowns outside her house terrorizing her. Why introduce a bunch of clowns at the last second? Even with the addition of more threats, the movie doesn’t movie into terrifying territory, and the conclusion is a letdown, with no explanation for anything that happened, no Halloween party, and the clown seemingly moving on to harass someone else. It seems that films inspired by those real sightings of creepy clowns that were talked about on the news several years ago are becoming a bit of a trend.
