Stitches – Review

20th March 2013

*Please excuse the language – sorry Mum*

Oh what the fuck is this fresh hell?

Stitches is an over-weight, chain smoking, useless clown who’s accidentally killed by a bunch of children at a birthday party (it sounds funnier written down). Six years later… I don’t know why six years later ask the writer… he comes back to life when the same bunch of kids from the birthday bash put on a house party.

Stitches is essentially a “comical” version of a slasher film. Inexplicably Ross Noble takes the lead as the royally pissed un-dead clown. Really. Ross Noble. Everyone’s favourite, cheeky, off-beat yet still accessible to mainstream taste comedian has decided to pick this monumental shit shop as his first starring role.

You may have gauged that I didn’t like Stitches.

The casting decision of Ross Noble seems absolutely ludicrous as they could have hired any un-fit schleb to run around in clown feet muttering obscenities under his breathe. Maybe Noble thought the script was genuinely funny? Maybe the producers have something on him? Either way he brings nothing of his comedic charm to this film in the slightest. The whole film seems to coast along on the conceit the premise is funny enough to not bother with any other gags. How many times does director/co-writer Conor McMahon think we need to here Noble mumour “fuck’s sake” everytime he falls over. It wasn’t funny the first fucking time!

Stitches would have been so much simpler if it was just trying to be a straight forward spoof of generic slasher flicks. Instead it aims to bring some Skins style teenage angst among the gaggle of teenagers that are hunted down. I’m not going to bother naming each one. They’re either amazingly annoying or so forgettable that you could be excused for not giving the tiniest shit when they’re offed.

The visual style of the film is borderline student. Save for a few out-of-the-blue moments where they obviously hired a really expensive camera for the day to shoot close ups of severed heads falling to the ground. In fairness these shots do look impressive. Would the film have been better had the whole thing been shot like that? Probably not. A herpes sandwich will still give you herpes even if it’s served in Warbuton’s Farmhouse bread – not sure what my point was there.

The other concession I’ll give is that some of the effects are decent enough and the director likes his blood so gore-hounds might find something entertaining. A nice moment with an inflating head and some brains but that’s about it.

I usually love films that are so bad they’re good but Stitches is just out and out shit. It’s not remotely funny, Ross Noble fans would be advised to stay clear. The plot manages to combine I Know What You Did Last Summer, Mean Girls, Hollyoaks and Stephen King’s It (not a stellar line up I grant you) and come up with a mess that involves a mystical cult of clowns who seem to live in the countryside of Ireland, sprouting up at random intervals to kill children.

I’m angry that this film was bad. I’m angry that I watched this film but mostly I’m angry at Michael Bay – I don’t know why but I am.

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