KLOWN KAMP Redifines Clowning Around...

KLOWN KAMP MASSACRE (2011)

D. Phillip Gunn
Troma

This recent release from the insane (or is it inane) folks at TROMA seeks to tame the balance between horror and comedy once again, between camp and clowning around, between gore and balloon animals. The results are a game changer, the kind of film that redefines the genre. That looks at the rules of genre and decides that it is time to totally do away with them and start over fresh. You've never seen a movie like KLOWN KAMP MASSACE and more than likely never will again. 

The movie opens with a psycho Clown named Edward at Clown college going on a killing spree. The is being recorded. Jump forward a few years and the local clown camp is being re-opened, complete with a group of misfit, knuckle heads who hope to make it big as clowns. But psycho Edward is still running around the camp doing people in.

The movie uses the expected iconography of the slasher genre and deconstructs it using the comedy elements, fusing it with clown jokes and costumes, causing it all to be a juxtaposition of styles. By doing so this becomes a celebration of not only the horror film of which it constantly looks back at the audience with a wink and a grin, but of the idea of the scary clown but giving us those clowns as victims. Obviously the whole point of the movie is to say to the average horror fan that “Your expectations are too high, so we aim to shoot lower and keep those expectations in place. It is as if the filmmakers where looking at the horror fandom itself and saying “ Look we see that you think you are cooler than this material, but you really aren't not. We see what has come before and we have digested that and made this from all that has come before. All you fans with high and mighty expectations can just go get fucked because this is just us having fun. But completely restoring faith in the genre is the process.” The sting in the tail of the movie makes the while thing end up be oh so “meta” as it folds in on itself and changes once again. 

In all honestly the movie ends up becoming a little bit charming, with a couple of jokes that work including the ICP kid, and a couple of fake commercials in the final moments. 

So KLOWN KAMP MASSACRE kills the kompetition,

REVIEW © Andy Copp.

• I actually Watched KLOWN KAMP MASSACRE after coming home from seeing CABIN IN THE WOODS a movie I really did not care for. The reaction to CABIN online has been overwrought at best with fans and critics falling to their knees in praise. This entire review of KKM is made of of actual hyperbole from online posts and reviews for CABIN but when applied to another movie not associated to a filmmaker with a set godlike status hopefully people can see how insane this stuff sounds.