It’s official: cinema has ruined clowns. Which particular make-up-caked straw broke the camel’s back is up for debate, however; from The Man Who Laughs to Terrifier, it’s currently hard to imagine when the garishly-dressed grinning maniacs were more funny than scary. Yet audiences are forever drawn to the freaky little guys, with a strange mass appeal to people willing to be spooked by mischief and cruelty in equal measure. They do make for striking posters at the very least; a VHS cover of a wacky smile staring out of the darkness was always an enticing date night option for many. But after a recent boom of evil clown movies, heralded by the box-office success of two It films, a significant amount of Oscar buzz for Joker and the headline-grabbing controversy of the Terrifiers, where is left to go for these painted weirdos? Colin Krawchuk’s The Jester tries to offer a definitive answer.
The Jester of the title is an orange-suited, top hat-sporting and mask-wearing bad guy with a talent for magic and malevolence. Instead of resembling a medieval court jester with a bell-clad cockscomb, he’s a predominantly modern version of a troublesome japester, possessing the sharply-cut frame of Jack Nicholson’s Joker. His gums are black and his teeth blackened, his cheekbones extended far beyond their natural height, and this spooky face keeps popping up here and there on Halloween Night around two half-sisters who have been brought into orbit of one another following their father’s apparent suicide. Emma (Lelia Symington) was abandoned as a child by her dad who then set up shop elsewhere after the birth of his second daughter from another marriage, Jocelyn (Delaney White), and this fractious relationship forms what heart the film has. But will the psychic and psychotic antics of the eponymous annoying ghoul make or break their chance at connection when they need each other the most?
To say The Jester is interested in navigating this relationship with nuance or depth is giving it too much credit. Emma’s wayward ways are established through her work as a roadie, suggesting a lifetime of drifting from place to place and a deep attraction toward the bottle. Symington actually fares quite well in a mostly thankless role, mostly down to some genuine fire reignited from many years of abandonment. White’s Jocelyn is assigned to the boilerplate grieving role, being given scenes upon scenes of material where she’s far more sad than scared. The Jester’s focus is strangely mostly on this padding, leaving a few scant sequences of its villain’s meddlesome black magic adrift in a tired three acts of trauma we’ve seen before.
The Jester’s eyes are completely covered up, leaving very little room for expression in a character that lives or dies by how it looks at its prey.
One would hope that The Jester’s interests would swing back the other way towards abject cruelty and gore if the emotions aren’t going to land; say what you will about Damien Leone’s Terrifier films, but their single-minded commitment to extended sequences of torture and grievous bodily harm set them severed head and shoulders above the competition. And yes, The Jester is capable of the occasional moment of eeriness, thanks in part to an impish delight in pulling tricks like snatching an unsuspecting victim’s head in his top hat or transplanting his arm into a child’s Halloween candy bag. Yet when the existence of the film seems to be a cheap money-making scheme in the wake of Terrifier’s disproportionate and unexpected success, there needs to be something to stoke that same level of disgust or dread (the production company behind The Jester is literally called ‘Dread’, so the bar is set unfairly high for the film to evoke that feeling from the opening titles) It never reaches there in the end, weighed down by a series of peril-free hallucinations that are so uncertain of their grasp on reality that they can’t build any stakes or tension.
What is left is the potential for The Jester himself to become a low-rent horror icon. This is another thing that fails to click here, as co-writer Michael Sheffield’s physical portrayal of the silent psychopath doesn’t capture any bonafide evil or spookiness. Once again, the Terrifier comparisons trickle in, as one can’t help but measure one clown against another, with David Howard Thornton’s prickling, lively Art the Clown still remaining modern horror’s best on-screen jokester. There’s something grotesque about Art’s unnervingly massive smile and quick eyes, especially since he relies on make-up rather than a mask. The Jester’s eyes are completely covered up, leaving very little room for expression in a character that lives or dies by how it looks at its prey. Marketing another Jester movie might be a tough sell if the design and portrayal of its central baddie doesn’t change, especially when the killer clown genre might have finally run out of helium.
As a way to eke out 90 minutes of a cosy night-in with a loved one, The Jester possesses some bargain-bin charm that many before it have had and many after it no doubt will too. Yet in the middle of this sub-genre growing bigger and bigger by the day, it remains a minor footnote, and the Jester himself another overly familiar face in a rogue’s gallery of craven comedians.
Dazzler Media presents The Jester in UK cinemas from 10 November
Simon’s Archive – The Jester (2023)
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