Displaying items by tag: Apocalypse Clown movie

APOCALYPSE CLOWN

Ireland, 2023, 100 minutes, Colour.

David Earl, Natalie Palamides, Amy De Bhrun, Fionn Foley, Tadhg Murphy, Ivan Kaye, James Walmsley, Shane O'Brien, Barry McGovern.

Directed by George Kane.

Of course, a variation on Apocalypse Now. The now is 2023 and Apocalypse is comparatively minor – although the opening credits with the focus on earth and the glow suggest something more cosmic. Actually, a solar flare causes an electricity blackout – and there is some minor upset with people coping with the outage.

Response to this film will be very much dependent on one’s sense of humour. Some have found it uproariously funny. Others have found it rather tiresome – and non-Irish coping with accents.

The film was made over a period of 23 days, out and around in Ireland, for a comparatively small budget. A group of friends had worked together in comedy, making some films, and decided to focus on a group of clowns, their personalities, their shtick, interactions, clashes, rivalries, almost in the context of the mini-Apocalypse.

Some of the clowns will appeal, the sad clown performing to children who are taking no notice of him, the vein that clown and his preoccupation with his coming performance, the young female clown who has more than a violent streak. Some of the clowns go to a workshop with a famous French Master, his sardonic remarks and condemnations, and earnest performance by Pepe and his being humiliated. And, then the master collapses and dies.

This is also something of a mini-Apocalypse and bands the clowns together as they attend his funeral in the context of the outage. And to this, a reporter who is dissatisfied with her job, has had a relationship with one of the clowns previously and broken it off, is assigned to the funeral.

The result is a kind of mixed gathering of clowns behaviour is clowns, clowns behaving as human beings with their rivalries and jealousies, encountering people along the way and getting advice getting warnings.

Apocalypse Clown could be described as a cinema oddity – and the filmmakers would not want it to have been called otherwise!