My quick rating – 4.1/10. During the great killer clown craze of 2016, remember, when the scariest part was realizing people actually went outside? Well, Helloween tries to make it the setup for a global clown apocalypse. Dr. Ellen Marks (Jeanine Nerissa Sothcott) and her trusty sidekick journalist John Parker (Michael Paré) discover that all roads lead to Carl Cane (Ronan Summers), a smirking serial killer who somehow commands an army of honking, homicidal followers from prison. And then… well, the movie just sort of forgets to do anything cool with that.
I was expecting a film about a killer clown revolution to offer, at the very least, a few gruesome deaths or a memorable face-paint massacre. Instead, Helloween gives us the slasher equivalent of listening through the wall while your neighbor watches a better horror movie. Every single kill happens off-screen — you just get a sound effect and some reaction faces. Imagine Terrifier without the terror, the gore, or the Art… basically, imagine Terrifier rewritten by someone afraid of ketchup.
Summers’ performance as Cane is baffling. As a kid, his character was portrayed as an evil prodigy; as an adult, he feels like he’s warming up for open mic night at a Jim Carrey tribute act. It’s hard to be afraid of a man who seems two steps away from saying, “Somebody stop me!” Sothcott, meanwhile, delivers her lines with all the passion of someone reading the weather forecast during a hostage situation. Thankfully, Caroline Wilde, as her daughter Leah, manages to keep a shred of dignity amid the clownery (pun intended).
Then comes the twist. You know, that big “gotcha” moment every low-budget horror flick seems contractually obligated to attempt. Except here, it’s as predictable as a Halloween store opening in September. It doesn’t explain the supernatural nonsense or the logistics of a global clown uprising — it just waves vaguely at the idea and calls it a day.
I went in expecting a bloody, campy slasher perfect for a Shocktober binge. What I got instead was a movie that mistook confusion for mystery and ambient clown laughter for horror. Using the real 2016 clown craze could’ve been clever, maybe even unsettling. Instead, the film squanders that setup faster than a juggler dropping flaming pins. What was marketed as “an army of killer clowns” turns out to be… just one guy holding a grudge against his psychiatrist and a single follower, Candy. Talk about false advertising.
A 4.2 feels generous, but given the cinematic crimes I’ve endured lately, I’ll allow it. Helloween had a promising premise — evil clowns, Halloween chaos, potential for actual scares — but it honked its red nose straight into mediocrity.
