'Amusement' Hardly Amuses But It Earns Scares
Average Thriller Trods Familiar Territory But Isn't Half Bad
Three young woman are terrorized by an insane mental patient known, in the credits anyway, as The Laugh, who has a distinct clownish laugh and was supposedly teased by the girls when they were all kids. (That's a justifiable reason to kill them, right?) He would make twisted mousetraps for science projects, and now, he torments the girls in similar ways but on separate occasions.
Slasher Anthology Makes Nods to Other Genre Films
The first segment with Shelby (Laura Breckenridge, a dead ringer for '80s horror heroine Jill Schoelen) resembles The Hitcher, as she gets kidnapped after driving in a convoy with her boyfriend. Let's just say, the serial killer isn't whom she expects it to be. Tabitha's (Katheryn Winnick, Failure to Launch) section is probably the creepiest, evoking memory of When a Stranger Calls, as while babysitting, she spends the night in a room full of clown dolls.
(When she discovers the human-sized clown sitting in a rocking chair does not belong in the house, get ready to scream.) Last and least is Lisa (Jessica Lucas, Cloverfield), who tries getting into an old bed-and-breakfast mansion where her roommate is supposedly hiding out. Of course, being the helpless damsel-in-distress that Lisa is, she sends her boyfriend in to do the dirty work, but you know what they say, he can check in but not check out.
Amusement Is a Slash Above the Rest
Amusement isn't really an anthology film like it leads on, even though these three segments could have worked as stand-alone films. It's disjointed, until the last half hour--which brings all four women together with the killer in the nutso's funhouse of terrors--is basically 'Saw' with likable, attractive women and a giggly psycho.
Shelby, Tabitha, and Lisa are well acted by Breckenridge, Winnick, and Lucas. Director John Simpson brings style and solid production values to the table, and Marco Beltrami's musical score helps with the tension.
Jake Wade Wall's screenplay is occasionally cliched, but it figures since Wall also wrote the remakes for The Hitcher and When a Stranger Calls. The Laugh is sketchily developed and his motivations are not clearly explained enough to be convincing. And Keir O'Donnell as the loony killer is annoyingly over-the-top and not very menacing. The weak "shrug" of an ending is only remotely satisfying enough because the freak of nature gets what he deserves.
Failed to be released to theaters, Amusement may not be good. But it being a slash above the direct-to-video brethren and most contemporary horror films, that's enough of a compliment.
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