Well fuck me sideways, I never thought I’d end up with egg on my face!
Year Released : 2012
Director : Conor McMahon
Cast : Ross Noble, Tommy Knight, Gemma-Leah Devereux, Shane Corcoran, Thommas Byrne, Eoghan McQuinn, Roisin Barron and Hugh Mulhern
Something that not a lot of people know about me is that I love stand up comedy and attend gigs on a regular basis. I have seen Jack Dee, Jimmy Carr, Steve Hughes, Bill Bailey, Jason-John Whitehead and Jason Manford live in recent years, as well as owning DVDs from Michael McIntyre, Rob Brydon and Ross Noble, the latter of which is probably not very well known outside of my native UK.
I find Ross’ comedy to be quite endearing and he can segway very easily into a variety of different topics, even if they differ from what he was initially talking about. He is one of the most adaptable and quick thinking British comedians out there, so as he is in a horror film it seems only right to review it.
I know nothing about the film before watching it, all I know is that it was on the “Horror Channel”, so it’ll probably not be very good.
Plot
Richard (Noble) is a kids party clown going by the stage name of stitches when one day his shoes are tied together by a child and he collapses face first onto a knife, killing him. After his funeral a group of other clowns performs a ritual that is observed by Tommy (Knight for the majority of the film).
Six years later Tommy is still haunted by visions of clowns and his friends thrown him a party to celebrate his birthday. Some of them put an invitation on Richard’s grave as a joke, but unwittingly this resurrects him as a clown zombie. He makes his way into the party and easily kills Paul (Mulhern), one of the kids who tortured him at the initial party.
How long before he finds and kills the rest?
A decent comedy horror, or just as I expected?
Over the past 18 entries for this second ever “Season of Horror” I have heavily criticised the films in question, or at least the majority. Infact, I think (without looking back on it) I’ve only given the approved stamp to one film that I hadn’t seen before and I wasn’t optimistic ahead of this. I was wrong.
“Stitches” is one of those comedy-horrors that I think anyone who isn’t British will not get. The humour is very British to say the least and I feel that it will go over the head of anyone who isn’t used to it. For me it made the film watchable and more importantly, fun.
Whilst not scary and definitely more of a comedy, there are some decent horror elements. Richard feels like a genuine threat to the main characters and the deaths are inventive and gruesome, such as opening someone’s skull and scooping their brains out like ice cream. The deaths get more gruesome as time goes on, and they are wonderfully unpredictable.
For a change there were actually some decent characters in this horror comedy and there seems to be a genuine bond between them. The relationships between them is explored more than most other similar films and that is something that is very important. I found myself wanting the characters to survive because of this, and that is something that is very hard to come by in a lot of horror films.
There are a few silly mistakes scattered throughout, one character still clearly breathing several minutes after they have supposedly died. However, I can forgive the silly little mistakes because of how fun the rest of the movie is.
Summary
A fun and often silly comedy-horror movie, “Stitches” was about as entertaining as they have come for this
site recently. If you’re like me and British then you’re almost certainly going to enjoy this, but I can imagine a lot of the humour going over non-Brits heads.
I would definitely recommend viewing this often entertaining and rarely serious horror film. With unique death scenes and good character development, I can definitely recommend this.
Watch it!
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