How We Laughed (Amusement (DVD))

Member Name: plipplop

Product:	Amusement (DVD)
Date:	02/06/09 (91 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Creepy clown, curious format

Disadvantages: Doesn't hold together, bad acting

A review of just the film, Amusement was produced in 2008 and released directly to DVD in region 2 in March 2009.

A teenaged girl named Shelby is travelling home for the weekend in her boyfriend's car. To help the journey pass more quickly, they join an informal 'convoy' and tag along with a truck and another car along the darkened highways. But when they stop for gas, Shelby spots something in the back of the truck that leads her to believe the truck driver can't be trusted.

When Tabitha goes over to her aunt's house to take over from the babysitter, she is shocked to find that the girl has abandoned the two young boys and left them alone in the house. As night falls, Tabitha puts the boys to bed and settles down in the guest bedroom, which also doubles as storage for her aunt's collection of clown dolls. Tabitha is particularly perturbed by a life-sized clown that sits in a rocking-chair in the corner of the room - and she'd have good reason.

Lisa is out in a bar for the night with her room mate, who hooks up with a guy and goes back to his hotel. When Lisa's friend fails to return, she persuades her boyfriend to come to the hotel with her and see what has happened to the girl. The hotel turns out to be an extremely old, sprawling gothic mansion, and the creepy guy at the door convinces Lisa that something is wrong, prompting her to send her boyfriend in alone.

Three seemingly unconnected experiences that are actually linked by the traumas of childhood - but the danger doesn't just lurk in the past......

Sometimes a film leaves an extremely positive impression, and at others, quite the opposite happens. Occasionally, a film sits distinctly between the two, containing imaginative, creative elements that make you love it, only to be offset by some ridiculous, ill-conceived mistakes that can result only in hatred. Amusement is such a film.

Directed by John Simpson (who demonstrated an eye for weird things with the Lee Evans thriller Freeze Frame), Amusement comprises two distinct methods of storytelling. The larger part of the film features three distinct segments, played out rather like individual stories in the way that Tales from the Crypt used to work. The rest of the film operates on a more traditional, real-time basis and the two styles overlap only occasionally, and just enough to demonstrate that they are actually all linked by one central idea. The segmented story telling is something I find very appealing and here it initially works very well. The three girls' stories and fast-paced and intriguingly plotted in such a way that the audience is soon very curious as to what is going to happen. Things that initially appear to be very predictable turn out to be quite the opposite and Jake Wade Wall's writing yields more than a few surprises. The three stories are reasonably short and given the link introduced between stories two and three, the audience might superficially be left wanting more.

The converse, sadly, is that none of the three stories is particularly well considered, particularly stories one and three that rely on a level of stupidity that is bordering on being nauseating. Whilst the genre relies on a certain level of naivety, the ordeal into which Shelby is propelled seems so entirely ridiculous that it's very difficult to take it seriously. Similarly, Lisa's ordeal in story three quickly becomes rather irritating as the plot dives off a cliff into a seething sea of retarded decision-making - and that's all before the final segment kicks in, which really seems to push the boundaries of what an audience will accept as plausible peril. It's a problem that we've seen from Jake Wade Wall before. Having delivered the screenplays for both The Hitcher and When A Stranger Calls remakes, Wall seems to have a serious problem persuading the audience to believe in a victim's ordeal, largely because he seems content to believe that teenaged girls are so stupid they deserve everything they get.

These problems with the plot are a huge disappointment given only that the film otherwise yields some stuff that's really worth seeing. The creepy clown in story two, for example, is as creepy as creepy can be and the segment is perfectly plotted, building the tension up into a telephone revelation that wouldn't have been out of place in the aforementioned Stranger Calls movie. The clown looks really, really scary and in what is probably the most traditional of the three stories, Wall keeps it simple and scary. That's not to say that the other two stories are without appeal. The first one is daft but has a credible twist (although keen viewers will quickly see it coming). The third one is probably the most atmospheric of the three and, stupid decisions aside, is probably the weirdest, the most gruesome, and definitely the least predictable.

The girls are pretty much carbon copies of one another, all looking like a GHD model and demonstrating the same acting capability. The Laugh (to explain who he is would be a spoiler) is cast very badly in the shape of Keir O'Donnell who doesn't have a clue, but he's not as bad as Rena Owen's psychiatrist who is truly dreadful. Tad Hilgenbrink (what a name) is the film's only visual saving grace, given only that he is unquestionably cute but still wooden (and sadly not in the biblical sense).

The fact is, however, that it all really goes ass up in the final section where any style or consideration goes out of the window. Wall makes the tiresome decision to try and cobble together elements of every popular horror film from the last three years into an apparently crafty conclusion and doesn't pull it off. Having failed to develop any kind of empathy in the three girls seen in the individual stories, it's no real surprise that the last act really just hammers a nail in the already apathetic coffin the audience finds itself lying in. Curiously for a direct DVD release, Amusement has a reasonably expensive feel to it. Filming in the gothic hotel and the final section works very well and it doesn't feel like budget was the main problem here. The production values are very mainstream and, had the plot held itself together more satisfyingly, this would almost certainly have made a good return at the cinema. In spite of the 18 certification (not really deserved here) the film would still appeal to a younger, teenaged and (generally) less demanding audience.

So, it's one star for the clown and one star for everything else.

Summary: Three girls suffer very different experiences that are somehow linked