It is incredible how with a house (Asylum) that gave enough play to create tension and a real murderer with a macabre backstory, they have managed to make such a dreck of a movie (gacy house). It doesn’t work as a horror movie, because it’s not scary; it doesn’t work as a comedy because although sometimes it makes you want to laugh, it’s because of how badly done everything is; and it doesn’t work as entertainment because how boring the movie is.
That said, what are we facing? Well, it’s very easy, a movie made with no desire, with hardly any budget and with four actors, with the same objective as the rest of the movies produced by Asylum, to be a quick and easy to digest entertainment. In this case, it doesn’t even achieve that.
The first few minutes are used to learn a little about the story of John Wayne Gacy, a real serial killer who murdered more than thirty young people, most of them after raping and torturing them several times, and then making them swallow their own clothes until they suffocated. The story has juice, the killer was one of the most sadistic known, in his house were found 26 of the bodies of the missing young people and as a bonus, his last words before being executed were the same as those of the introductory phrase of this review: kiss my ass, addressed to his victims. With a killer like that, you’d think the film would be tough to watch, something like The Poughkeepsie Tapes, which, without the need for death and blood everywhere, was shocking.
But no, here the hardest scene we can see is how the supposed ghost pushes a blonde out of a chair (it seems that the clown was playful) and almost everything happens at the end and out of shot, without knowing who dies or why, something that sucks a lot after enduring almost eighty minutes of nonsense and heavy stretches, where the most interesting are the tits of the medium (yes, change the surgeon because what an exaggeration) and an attempt at a sex scene that comes to nothing.
I know it doesn’t make much sense to talk about nudity in a horror blog, but if I don’t talk about it, I can’t say much more about this movie; yes, it’s true that in some shots something happens; like a light flickers or a bed cushion moves, terrifying situations that I’d rather not name and interspersed with the most interesting moments, with absurd seances and walks around the house that become repetitive. I don’t think I’ve been so bored with a mokumentary since the Paranormal Activity sequels.
I’m the first to understand that movies in this format tend to be slow, to get us fully into the story and all that, but here it’s unapologetically slow, we don’t get into anything, we don’t feel anything, the characters don’t care about us and neither the producer nor the situations convey any kind of uneasiness (Who was the smart one who decided to have the lights on in almost every room? it seems like it’s daytime throughout the whole movie!)
I don’t want to say much about the cast, from bad to lousy, not to mention the incredible and inexplicable need of the medium to show her boobs. First she is scratched (or whatever) on a boob, perfect excuse to get a close-up, and then to get a gratuitous nudity and try to lift the film, by chance, her shirt and bra are opened, while she fights with spells (yes, you read that right) with the supposed ghost.
The special effects are worth mentioning, specifically a scene shot with a fixed camera that is one of the crappiest I’ve seen lately, as well as the ghost, who’s not happy with his initial outfit, changes it at every appearance. In order not to be so negative, I will say that it also has a couple of salvageable scenes, quite well done and that even if only for a moment, manage to generate a minimum of tension.
They had a good scenario, a good story and a good character, but they carried it out in a disastrous, boring and dispensable way. I hope I get lucky and that Gacy: The Killer Clown is worth it, as much as here they leave it somewhat simple and ridiculous, this killer was one of the worst in history as far as serial killers are concerned.
