SUPER HAPPY FUN CLOWN

***

Directed by Patrick Rea.

Starring Jennifer Seward, Nicole Hall, Matt Leisy, Deborah Madick.

Horror comedy, USA, 87 mins.

Reviewed as part of FrightFest 2025 - UK Premiere

Director Patrick Rea, screenwriter Eric Winkler and star Jennifer Seward expand their same-named 2023 short film into this likeable, character-driven comic horror, with influences ranging from John Waters and STARRY EYES (the subject of an onscreen discussion) to Ti West’s PEARL.

Seward brings wit, pathos and an authentically fracturing mental state to the role of Jennifer, a downtrodden young woman whose miserable childhood under a wooden spoon-wielding bitch-mother is matched by a bleak adult existence married to a selfish couch potato loser. Solace is found in the guise of her alter ego Jenn-O The Clown, entertaining people at the park with mime humour and tricks – but her obsession with real serial killers (she has one of those much-coveted Richard Ramirez calendars!) shifts into killing people for real.

The central themes of childhood trauma and PTSD are well played, and Seward has us rooting for this likeable, ill-treated misfit even when she’s staging an extended murder spree at an impressively realised horror attraction showcasing tributes to the 1925 PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON and FRANKENSTEIN. Alas, the story is significantly less engaging when the story diverts from Jennifer to a pair of dull, unconvincing young detectives on her trail – when focusing more on Jenn-O’s day job, relationship woes and growing psychosis would have been the more compelling option.

Steven West