Week-end en enfer

I found Grim Weekend's colourful cover at my local Blockbuster Video and was intrigued as to what kind of movie it actually was. I checked with the IMDB and no one had yet posted a review, but thankfully there was a link to the film's official site, which included a small preview. From the clip I gathered that it didn't include the most talented cast in the world, but it looked plausibly tight and brimming with suspense! Believe me, if you've seen it you'll understand where I'm coming from. Keeping in mind the trailer is only two minutes long and the movie is over eighty, it's not always overly conclusive as to what's in store for you when you finally watch. I had a good feeling about this one though and went ahead and bought an ex-rental copy anyway. This is listed on most websites as a TV movie, but judging by some of the bad language – the C word, no less – I found the idea of that rather questionable. It looks more to me like a typical direct to video effort, but who am I to argue?

In the opening we see a point of view murder that proves Director Bob Willems is a big fan of Halloween and is paying his homage (or completely ripping it off? Whatever you want to call it!). An adulterous wife, or girlfriend (actually we never find out who she is and this scene has NOTHING to do with the rest of the movie!) is on the phone when someone creeps up and stabs her in the stomach. As she recoils from the wound she asks ‘what did you do', which I actually found pretty amusing! I kept expecting the killer to reply ‘what do you think I did dummy'; but the scriptwriter instead decided to try to keep things creepy… Next up we meet Brandon Walker (Ken Hebert), an office executive that's planning a weekend getaway to a remote cabin out in the woods. It'd be a pretty boring movie if he went alone, so we are soon introduced to his date Tracy (Amanda Watson) and their friends Susan (Chris Bruck) and Mark (Hank Fields). Whilst on the long journey to the previously abandoned house, they meet Diane (Melissa Bale) in a bar and she soon joins the troupe of merry campers. After they have arrived and night falls, the group sit round a fire and tell ghost stories – so far so Friday the 13th -, but we see that they are being watched by an ominous presence. The next morning when everyone wakes up, Susan has disappeared and someone has filled the area with bizarre mutilated dolls. Before long they are stranded with only a ruthless killer clown for company!

Grim Weekend is a prime example of a movie putting most of the good bits into the trailer, leaving about an hour and a half of screen time totally devoid of anything redeeming. There are only three, yes THREE on screen murders in the whole film. The first is about two minutes into the feature and the next over an hour after. They're all mostly bloodless and instantly forgettable, which makes me wonder why the BBFC rated this as an 18. The killer clown is especially obnoxious, spending most of his time singing nursery rhymes or chopping wood for what seems like an eternity before he finally gets to terrorising the campers. The performances are as horrible as you can possibly imagine and the characters are mostly unsympathetic and flat. Mark finds a gutted victim lying in the woodland struggling for breath and makes no attempt to comfort or help him. He just looks at him completely emotionlessly and then wanders off leaving him to die (?). The most likeable character of the bunch was Denise the under acted slut and I'm sure that she was meant to be the little bitch that the audience hates! I couldn't help but find myself rooting for her instead of the plain Jane that was meant to grab the viewer's vote of sympathy. When the gang enter a bar early on in the movie, they meet a prostitute called Sophia (Jamie Hartzog), who in a few lines proves to be far more attractive and talented than any of the other lame ‘actors' that plague the screen throughout. Why couldn't she have played a bigger part?

Thankfully it doesn't suffer from a lack of lighting like so many of its counterparts and the director manages a fair few decent shots. Admittedly the ending was quite unexpected, owing a sly nod perhaps to The Texas chainsaw Massacre without over using the influence. Finding strange dolls around the house started as a fairly macabre touch, but the idea gets tired very quickly, which sadly the crew failed to notice. It was a brave attempt by the director to try and extract fear without using many murders or too much gore. However an extreme lack of momentum and no apparent filling leaves Grim Weekend ultimately looking like a hollow and empty shell. The director opens the usual bag of slasher platitudes including a silly point of view shot through a clown mask; nevertheless his inexperience is far too glaring to gain any merit out of them and he doesn't even try to add anything new to the formula. I bought this on the same day that I got the 25th anniversary Halloween DVD. Watching the special features, I noticed that John Carpenter took Halloween to someone from 20th Centaury Fox without it's excellent score and surprisingly they said that ‘it just wasn't scary'. The amusing thing was, what the hell did the producers think was frightening about this rubbish? It makes you wonder about a few films, doesn't it! There really is very little to recommend about this lazy and flat lined effort. It's tedious, poorly constructed and incredibly unatmospheric. Next time I get something like this, I think I'll keep my expectations a little lower.

Lucky me. I got a sneak peak at this pathetic little shot-in-Texas 'horror' flick from Artisan Entertainment a week before it hit video store shelves and, let me tell you, I've rarely laughed so hard in my life! This is so bad it easily steals the title of 'Worst Killer Clown Movie' from the insufferably stupid Full Moon fiasco KILLJOY. From all indications, this was shot on DV and it doesn't really 'look' all that bad quality-wise for digital, but boy does it ever fail miserably in every other area where it counts!

The story (slight and cliche as it is) goes as follows... An extremely douchey executive (Ken Hebert, who also scripted and co-produced with the director) takes skeptical co-worker Tracy (Amanda Watson) and horny married couple Mark and Susan (Hank Fields and Chris Bruck) along on a weekend getaway to a secluded cabin '12 miles' from the nearest town. On the way there, they pick up a bitchy/slutty hitchhiker (Melissa Bale) in a bar and end up at their destination where a nightly campfire tale about a murderous clown stalking the very same wooded area comes true when each of the foul-mouthed, pot-smokin' 'friends' disappears one-by-one, with only mutilated doll parts left behind to tell the tale of their fates.

The killer clown doesn't even show up in the film until near the end and it looks nothing like the demonic depiction of it on the video box aside from being morbidly obese. It basically spends an hour prancing around in the woods, chopping up wood and blabbing nursery rhymes. I cannot say enough bad things about the cast, especially the two guys and the hitchhiker chick, who either deliver their insipid dialogue with a bare minimum of enthusiasm or overact at the most inappropriate times. Doesn't really help that the dialogue is awful. I could go on for days on how inept this film is, how many continuity errors there are, how many pointless nature / animal shots are hilariously cut in at the strangest times and how amateurish the whole production is, but I'll just sign off by pointing out the whole package is quite a laugh riot in that Boy-This-Sucks kind of way.

Also noting that the film has been released here in the US as S.I.C.K. (SERIAL INSANE CLOWN KILLER). It's currently catalogued under its (original title) of GRIM WEEKEND.

Score: 1 out of 10

Okay.. where to begin... My friends and I watched this movie at a party. The cover of the DVD case looked promising, especially because one of my friends is scared of clowns. 10 minutes into the movie is a flashback that has nothing at all to do with the movie. I still don't know who the woman is or why she would ask a question like "what did you do?", when she can see plainly that he cut her in several different places. The entire movie appears to be shot with a camcorder, making it look like a Spanish soap opera. As for the actors.. I'm willing to bet that all that was required of them was to be able to speak English. The acting was the only thing "sick" about this movie.

Plot: Brandon Walker invites Mark and Susan(a married couple) to stay with him at his family's place for the weekend. They stop at a bar/restaurant and pick up Denise(some random slutty hitchhiker)and the girls invite her to stay with them. All is well until morning when they find Susan has gone missing. They search for her and leave a note which reads: Susan- went to look for you when you get back stay put. -Mark.. they search for about 10 minutes and come back. Oh I forgot to mention that they find several decapitated/mutilated dolls just about everywhere..a bit creepy at first..but after awhile just gets annoying. When they come back they find the note missing from the door. Mark states "oh i bet Susan came back, shes always doing stuff like this" (as if it happens all the time) they try to start the car(which of course has been tampered with.) When it gets dark Mark decides to go look for poor Susan again ... Denise goes with him.. and they start to talk about stuff an of course.. he screws her although they were supposed to be looking for his wife.

This is a very predictable movie.. the characters are clueless to the situation and are to stupid to get their asses out of there. It is a very low low low low budget movie.. the lowest of low.. if you want to watch this to see a scary clown.. don't... there is about 15 minutes of the clown killer who in-fact is a big fat man who when walking can somehow can catch up to an average size man who is sprinting. The clown in the movie is nothing like the clown on the DVD box, they bare no resemblance what so ever. DON'T WATCH THIS MOVIE IT MAY CAUSE YOU TO BREAK THINGS IN FRUSTRATION AND HATRED TOWARDS THE MOVIE

If this film was a comedy, I would have given it a 10. Oh my, where do I begin? Put it this way -- I've seen lots of terrible horror films, but this one makes Troll 2 look like freakin' Saving Private Ryan. It's as if a group of porn filmmakers decided to make a horror film, changed their mind in midproduction and decided to do a comedy, then went back to horror, and then decided that they should have just stuck with porno (softcore at that). Everything about this film is simply terrible: the musical score (someone shoot the guy who invented the Yamaha keyboard), the script, the directing, the cinematography, the acting. There simply are no words to describe this. Oh wait, yes there are: Holy $*%!.

Me and a group of friends rent horrible videos to laugh at them, trust me it has lead to some horribly spent money but also some great laughs. S.I.C.K. is one of the better horror-but-funny movie we've rented. The plot is over-done, the whole take your friends into the woods and never return thing is very old. The goriest part of the movie looks like your visiting the local butcher shop except a little dirtier and with blood on the play dough looking meat. And if anyone has ever been scared of this movie at any time they should stick to Cartoon Network for the rest of their life, it's pathetic. The good aspects of the movie are that the two girls in it are reasonably hot, one better then the other and you see them both naked during the movie. The other good aspect is that this movie is so bad at times that you will laugh till you cry. I don't like watching horrible acting or renting these horrible videos, I don't find that fun but seeing the amount of effort these people put into it and still come out so bad is hilarious and worth renting.Unless you are too mature to laugh at someone's downfalls I would recommend it.

If your renting/buying it to laugh at it I'd give it an 8.5.