This was a sort of fun double feature on Prime, due in part to the man meat on display. As for the clowns on the poster art, just forget it. These aren’t exactly clown slashers, and in one of them the clown is virtually nonexistent.
ALL DARK PLACES (2012)
This one starts with a straightforward story about a husband and wife trying to work out their marriage for their son.
But the dad pretty much starts to lose his mind, dreaming of encounters with a menacing clown…the same clown that seems to talk to the son in his room at night.
The wife gets frustrated with the husband falling back into his old habits, like partying with his musician friend.
I have a feeling these two want to do more than just drug and booze it up while rocking out in the basement…
There are actually some curious hints dropped throughout the film suggesting something deeper and darker is going on with the dad. The dream clown at one point says to him “I’ll pull your cock out through your nose!” Who says that??? (outside of a sex dungeon)
The “buddy” brings up Gacy when the dad tells him about his dreams, which he doesn’t even know are for some reason extending to the son. And the dad apparently assaulted a birthday party clown he was convinced was being inappropriate with his son. Hm….
I’m starting with the man in the mirror, I’m asking him to change his ways…
The wife seems to come and go—one minute she’s taking the son and leaving him, the next minute she’s still in the house going about her daily business. And she parties with the dad even though she’s furious that he’s hitting the bottle and the drugs.
Or at least I think she is. After a while I wasn’t sure what (if anything) was real. The movie begins to feel like an excuse to film the dad shirtless as much as possible…and get me to blog about it on Boys, Bears & Scares.
The clown does eventually terrorize the family outside of the dad’s dreams…I think. No joke, I didn’t understand this movie.
But hey, there’s a shirtless daddy, plus a scary clown chases people. I’m good.
A PLACE IN HELL (2018)
This one is more fun if you’re just looking for a simple little slasher. Students are assigned to make videos around the theme “What does horror mean to you?” One group decides to head to an old Halloween haunting attraction to film theirs. It’s not Halloween though—it’s the middle of the winter and snowy.
Meanwhile, the awkwardly melodramatic side story is about a burned out detective who worked on the case related to the killer…the killer being a studly dude who #MeToos his dead victims. Why do the hot ones always have to be dead girl fuckers?
“Now just lie there and don’t move. Man, I’m funny.”
A delicious angle of the film is that the killer is believed to be innocent. The detective even mentions that black guys are never serial killers and that this guy looked like an underwear model. I guess underwear models are never serial killers either.
The killer only wears a mask once, for one of the best scenes in the film.
And the only time a clown costume comes into play is for a scene in which two girls are looking at the front of the clown-themed part of the attraction.
The bimbo of the group, who thinks she’s a star, keeps us quite entertained until the killer finally starts slaying.
The film offers some fresh kill setups that come fast and furious…and all in daylight! Awesome. But eventually the remaining survivors head into the haunted attraction for the final chase scene.
Like I said, it’s simple but entertaining enough for sure.
