While alive Stitches was possibly the world’s worst kid’s clown. Drinking, swearing and with a huge range of awful tricks and sloppy balloon animals. He was the missing ingredient in no-one’s party plans.
But once deceased – thanks to a bloody mid- party incident that became burned into the consciousness of the pin sized party goers – Stitches becomes far more than another Shakes the Clown clone.
After being reanimated just in time to attend Tom’s (who ten years previous had his party ruined by Stitches’ passing) 16th birthday soirée, Stitches sets to slaughtering all the little buggers that poked fun at him on the day of his death.
And you can’t spell ‘slaughter’ without ‘laughter’ kids.
“Call me Krusty one more time and see what happens…”
Stitches is exceedingly gory, very funny and creative in ways that should put dozens of Hollywood horror hacks to shame. Stitches’ over-sized clown shoes carefully toe the line between horror and comedy by gleefully overstepping the bounds of good taste in both genres. The comedy is black as night, and the violence very, very bloody.
Many’s the time that I sat watching another boring derivative horror film in recent years where I thought “gee if only they have a little more thought here this would be sicker and better”. In Stitches they go the extra mile, use the extra blood bags, try a bit harder to disgust and appal. And the viewing experience is all the better for it.
Lurid and very bloody, (with sparing use of CGI), full of creative kills and amusing dialogue, Stitches is everything that Hollywood is not lately, and he deserves a franchise way more than The Collector, Victor Crowley (Hatchet) and numerous other pretenders.
Final Rating – 7.5 / 10. Don’t let the faux torture-porn cover fool you, Stitches is a lot more than another pale imitation. It is something new, dark and very watchable.
