The Clown at Midnight

...a sophisticated slasher film...

...excessive gore...

...for Fangoria readers, a 10...

Fifteen years ago, the murder of an opera singer lowered the curtain on an opera house. In the present day, Kate, the daughter of the murder victim is drawn to the abandoned opera house. Eerie flashbacks and nightmares haunt Kate. She can see the last things her mother saw on that horrible night. As luck would have it, the theatre is being donated to Kate’s high school and the terrified girl volunteers to join the clean-up crew. Their drama teacher (Miss Gibby, played by Margot Kidder) has drafted a variety of teens (a princess, a jock, Kate’s best friend and—for good measure—three theatre students). The same clown who murdered decades earlier is still on the scene. The teens start dropping off in a familiar pattern: no two people are killed the same way.

This film has as start a concoction of suspense and style it quickly spirals into an teen slasher film. Part Scooby Doo, part Friday the 13th, and part Scream. At the start, the suspense outweighed the gore, but then the heads started to roll and the tide of blood flowed.

A few elements of The Clown at Midnight are fresh in the slasher genre—for example, the past-life tie Kate feels to her murdered mother.

Rated R for horror violence, sexuality and some language