Stitches 2013 Review

Stitches 2013 Review

Year: 2013

Stars: Ross Noble, Tommy Knight, Eoghan McQuinn

Directed: Conor McMahon

Running Time: 86 mins

Directed by Conor McMahon (Directed Dead meat and The Disturbed a few years prior to this and has done shorts/TV series) on a grant of 600,000 euros, kindly donated from the Irish film board.

This ghastly clown story stars Ross Noble (He’s a British stand-up comedian and many panel shows) as the clown Stitches, Tommy Knight (from Sarah Jayne Adventures and Dr Who cameos) as Tom and Eoghan McQuinn (Nothing, His first film) as Richie.

This film starts off as it means to go on, lewd but in a good way with Richard “stitches” Grindle bonking his girlfriend. It is very slapstick at the start but what you expect from a movie with a clown in it?

Despite the beginning it tries to be pretty light hearted even with the kids being little brats, that is until a prank goes horribly wrong and they end up murdering/accidently killing (suppose it how you take it) the poor guy who is just trying to entertain them and make a living.

From here I noticed the film does not have shitty CGI effects and tries to go the route of decent make up effects, which it does quite well. So anyway the boy who is the initial cause of the death of stitches obviously feels bad about what he’s done.

When he sneaks to the graveyard (although the funeral seems to be like the next day they don’t happen that quick especially with a case like that I’m sure) to put the clowns squirt flower on his grave he witnesses some other clowns doing some ritual.

This was great as they manage to sombrely walk along chanting hohoho, hehehe he gets caught by them and scolded then suddenly he wakes up older in bed. Was fun to see a slight nod to the nightmare on elm street series here as we see the drug hypnocil, this was the drug used in there to stop dreams so was a nice little nod.

This film deals with all the school stuff kids go through these days; well even when I was in there. From idiot kids, bullies, budding love and friendships with odd teachers thrown into the mix, awkward smoking as well not everyone has a perfect ride in school.

Tom keeps having delusions at first of seeing stitches that he just dismisses as that, it’s a good third of the way into the film that we see him again proper and things start happening.

When an impromptu party is thrown at Tom’s house when his mum is out of town, Stitches rises from his grave to exact revenge.

Unfortunately despite some decent acting and good writing the film does just degenerate into slasher territory here, all the while dealing with teenage awkwardness.

Don’t get me wrong it’s not a bad film and I enjoyed it, but it’s just a tried and tested formula that works when done right.

Thankfully Stitches does it right with amusing ways a clown could kill you and it’s a good 80+ minutes of fun with very gruesome kills and some satirical highlights thrown in. Such as historical research into clown cults and the first ones to die are the dickheads, you know the usual stuff.

So after the initial bout of non-believers and the then realisation that oh there is something wrong by the survivors the film culminates in a decent ending that as you know I never spoil here on THN I give stitches a good 4/5 stars for just being a lot of fun to watch.

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