One year after her roommate's disappearance, a woman trying to get on with her life comes across a stranger investigating a series of murders around town who claims a deadly clown as the culprit instead which leads her to find the serial killer is real and must save her friends from his rampage.
This is a highly underwhelming and barely watchable genre effort. Among the main problems here is the outright wasting of time that makes this one go far longer than necessary. The antics between the roommates and her boyfriend before the murders goes on forever before that happens, the scenes of him out meeting locals in the woods for his study, or the absolutely inane storyline reacquainting with the former friends at the nightclub only to realize it's all a flashback just eat up so much time throughout here. That all of these scenes cause all of the slashings to be sporadic and confined to later makes this sluggish to get started. Likewise, there are also several issues with the underwhelming story that makes for a seemingly chaotic time. Not giving a reason for who anyone is or their connection to anyone else here just makes it next to impossible to figure out what's going on, as the stranger investigating everything has no motivation for doing so and the useless reacquainted friend just muddle up the storyline. The lives of the residents around the village, the non-reveals about the killer or just spending so much time waiting until everything is out and accepted cause this to feel scattershot and completely random. The other real issue here is the troublesome and non-threatening killer on display. He's no on-screen often enough to really get a feel for what he's capable of, and when he is the utterly cheap mask and out-of-shape beer-belly makes for a far-from-imposing figure. Add onto that the nonsensical ploy about kidnapping the roommate and holding her captive rather than killing her the second he could which makes for a truly lame subplot and removes any sense of fear out of the killer with this behavior. The end result is a laughably inept main villain and is the biggest reason holding this down along with the other factors. About the only thing that otherwise works here is the final half of this one where it features some enjoyable elements for once. The stalking scenes at the party aren't bad and feature some decent enough kills, especially with the rampage where he slaughters the fleeing teens although it is almost undone by one of the stupidest writing choices possible to carry on. Thankfully, the series of cat-and-mouse stalking in the underground tunnels gets this one back into the good graces as this packs a few solid surprises, decent suspense, and some energy to boot. It's just too little too late to save it.
Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language.
