Clown - Turbine 4K UHD Mediabook (Cover B)

Some movies just get lost in the shuffle or fail to get noticed. Given how many hundreds of films come out every year in theaters, video, and streaming services, some flicks just fall through the cracks without generating the buzz they'd otherwise deserve. It happens all the time. A good case in point was Jon Watts’ 2014 horror feature Clown. It was a film I was aware of from the viral fake trailer and its arduous release, but it took me years and a lot of prodding from friends to give it a try. And you know what? It’s actually pretty damned good! 

Stretching the genre into the folk/demon territory, Watts takes us on the journey of the amiable working-class father, Kent (Andy Powers). Busy as a realtor, he often struggles to juggle time between work, being a husband to his wife Meg (Laura Allen), and being present for their young son, but he does his best. Case in point, when the clown he booked for his son’s birthday cancels last minute, he steps up to the plate. Finding a trunk full of clown costume accouterments, Kent delivers the birthday of his little son’s dreams. But then he can’t get the costume off. The nose, the wig, the leathery olde-tyme suit refuse to come off. And then it starts to become him. As the costume tightens its grip on his soul, Kent becomes very hungry, and the thing growing inside him needs to feed…

So, Clown had a bizarre history to it. Originally made by Watts as a fake trailer for a film that didn’t exist, claiming to be directed by Eli Roth, the video went viral, and Roth decided he wanted to produce it. Filming began in winter 2012. It was picked up by Dimension Films. It began seeing limited theatrical releases in Europe around 2014, but it wasn’t until 2016 that the film finally hit video in the United States. In a nutshell, any film trying to get a meaningful release under the Weinstein Company banner during the late 2000s and early 2010s had a rough hill to climb - and that was before things all went to hell in 2017. After years of languishing around in different markets, it was more or less unceremoniously dumped on video. Then Watts became Sony and Marvel’s go-to guy to revitalize Spider-Man, and the film more or less just became an underappreciated footnote in the man’s IMDB list. 

Just because it dropped on video doesn't mean Clown is a bad horror flick; its release was just horribly mismanaged. I like this one. Perhaps not the greatest horror film ever made, but it doesn’t waste any time getting to the gnarly stuff, and it offers a clever spin on some old folk horror tropes. It also has a devilishly grim sense of humor that I think gets funnier with each viewing. I love how quickly the setup moves from one man finding something seemingly innocuous in a random trunk to it turning his life into a living nightmare. While the film doesn’t waste any time getting right into the mix, it doesn't skimp on setup and world-building. Thanks to the always great Peter Stormare, it does offer time to set up the rules of our demonic clown and how to stop it. I loved how the film sets the stage for a big moral quandary, all the while delivering some ghastly, ghoulishly grotesque makeup and gore effects! I hadn’t seen this since 2019 or 2020, and it was a really fun revisit. I like it when you revisit a film after so long, and it turns out to be quite a bit better than you remember. 

Vital Disc Stats: The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray 
Putting on the demonic skin suit of 2160p, Clown terrorizes 4K UHD as a two-disc 4K + Blu-ray Mediabook release from Germany’s Turbine. The 4K is pressed on a BD66 disc with a Region Free BD50 serving up the bonus features. Each disc is housed on either side of a stylish 25-page mediabook that’s designed to look like the creepy diary from the film, complete with photos and production sketches of the clown and a great essay from Tobias Hohmann. The essay is in German but the Google Translate app keeps getting better, so if you’re willing to roll with that process, it’s worth the read. Each disc loads to an animated main menu with standard navigation options.

Entering the 2160p Dolby Vision circus, Clown certainly makes a welcome splash on the format. As near as I can find, the film was finished on a 2K digital intermediate, but I have no idea how far that extends with this release. If it’s a new 4K master, it looks great. If it’s a simple upscale with HDR, it still looks great. The film is a dark, creepy piece of work. There aren’t many bright sunny places for this film to shine - but that doesn’t mean we lose out on those tight, clean details. As Kent gradually transforms into the demon, the creepy white face makeup, the skinned nose, and the leathery suit become more monstrous. This transfer lets all of those ghoulish practical effects and makeup come through with impressive clarity. Facial features, clothing textures, production design - all get their times to shine. Letting this transfer work its magic is a robust Dolby Vision grade that really highlights the contrast between dark, creepy, shadowy spaces and the limited lighting. Having worked at a Chuck E Cheese in my youth, I can testify that those tubes are a terrifying place to crawl around in the dark (so many lost diapers up there), and this transfer finds moments like that to deliver the visual goods.

On the audio front, we have an excellent Dolby Atmos track as well as a perfectly good DTS-HD MA 5.1 mix. Of the two, I’d argue that the Atmos is stronger, but both get the job done well. The distinction I have is that the Atmos mix offers some great spatial highlights for various sound effects. While there might not be a lot of call for distinct height channel object placement, the mix does find moments to shine - again, that playscape tube scene gives a little more room for the mix to breathe while also adding some extra heft to the impacts of people thumping around inside. Likewise, when Kent is in full demon form, the guttural screams or the groans of its rumbly tumbly tummy have more weight than on the DTS track. The dialog for both tracks is crystal clear, with no issues, so you’re good to go with either track you roll with.

Rounding out the extra features for this set, Turbine has assembled some nice extras here. I watched this film on streaming, so all of the extras are new to me, but what’s really cool to see is a new hour-long retrospective documentary about the making of the film. For that doc, Jon Watts stops by along with Christopher Ford, Tony Gardner, and composer Matt Veligdan stop by and it’s a very frank, interesting discussion. We have some more crew interviews, along with some deleted scenes and the original fake trailer in all its glory. 

• No Laughing Matter: The Making of Clown (HD 1:01:57)
• Interview with Matt Veligdan (HD 15:27)
• Interview with Tony Gardner (HD 14:09)
• Making Clown Featurette (HD 6:24)
• Deleted Scenes:
• Midnight Snack (HD 1:45)
• Clown Research (HD 1:59)
• Denise’s Death (HD 00:43)
• Baby in the Backseat (HD 1:11)
• Alternate Ending (HD 00:59)
• Original Fake Trailer (HD 01:HD)
• Concept Design Gallery
• German Trailer
• US Trailer

It’s rather entertaining to think that somewhere down the line of choosing the right filmmaker to take over the Spider-Man franchise, someone saw Clown and Cop Car and went, “That’s our guy!” And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just a fun leap to see a talented filmmaker go from music videos to an underseen horror flick to an indie crime drama to Marvel’s favorite wall-crawler inside of just a few years. As various clowns of all hair styles, noses, and makeup have made their way to the big screen and box office glory, it’s a good time to check out the lost gems like Jon Watts’ Clown. For a first-time feature, it’s pretty damn good, and I’m pleased to see it still holds up. It’s a gnarly flick with some great gore effects, but it's also smartly made, with a well-written setup that establishes the rules and lore of our evil demon. If Jon Watts needed a break from making billion-dollar-grossing comic book features, I’d be down to see a sequel! On 4K UHD for the first time, Turbine gives Clown the dressing up it deserves with an excellent Dolby Vision/Atmos presentation, complete with some worthwhile and interesting extras to devour. If you’re a fan of the film, all you have to do is decide which cover you want! Recommended

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