Stitches (2012 film)

Plot

Richard Grindle, a clown with the stage name "Stitches", is having sex with a woman in his van. While they are having sex, she notices an egg encased in a glass tube with a face painted on it. Stitches explains that "they" made him do it when he signed up. Stitches arrives late at Tommy's tenth birthday party. He attempts to entertain the children, but they instead ridicule him. Tommy's best friend Vinnie ties Stitches' shoelaces together, and Tommy throws a football on his face, causing him to trip and land on a kitchen knife on the other side of the room, unseen to the children, which penetrates his face. As the children come to find out, Stitches slowly gets up. Seeing him, all kids scream in terror and run away. However, Tommy stays transfixed, but when Stitches removes the knife, blood gushes out of the gaping wound, causing him to fall, and the knife flies above him. Stitches falls onto the floor as the knife falls onto his eye, killing him. Tommy visits Stitches' grave and finds a group of clowns performing a ritual. The group's leader, The Motley, threatens Tommy.

Six years later, Tommy is preparing for his sixteenth birthday. He is still haunted by the memory of his past birthday, and begins to have frightening hallucinations, such as a teacher turning into a clown and ripping off Vinnie's testicles before tying them to a party balloon. Hesitating at the idea of throwing a large party, he considers instead inviting only a few friends. Ultimately, he settles on a large gathering, and Vinnie secretly distributes many more invitations over the internet. Tommy, Vinnie, Richie and Bulger, all of whom had been present when Stitches died, prepare the house. As the guests, including Tommy's childhood crush Kate, arrive, Stitches comes back to life and leaves his grave.

Tommy, startled by Paul dressed as a clown as a joke, injures his head. Bulger takes Tommy to find a first-aid kit, and Tommy retreats to his treehouse with Kate. There, Tommy discusses his memories of the ritual he encountered as a child. Meanwhile, Paul is attacked by Stitches, who rips off his ear and one of his arms and pulls a live rabbit out of his throat before kicking his head off. The clown then finds Bulger, opens up his skull with a can opener, and removes his brain with an ice cream scooper. After serving up three perfectly round scoops of brain in a glass bowl, Stitches adds blood as a topping to complete his grisly ice cream sundae. Sarah, Paul's girlfriend, enters the attic to look for him. There, she is attacked by Stitches, and manages to fight back. As she escapes, Stitches drives an umbrella through her skull, killing her. Through his telescope, Tommy sees Stitches in the house, and goes to warn Vinnie of his presence, but is at first unsuccessful, due to Vinnie's desire to have sex with a formerly overweight classmate. Tom asks Kate to leave, but her boyfriend Dan stops her.

Outside, Stitches attacks Richie. Richie attempts to flee but trips and falls. Stitches rips out his intestines and fashions them into a balloon animal before stabbing him with a bike pump and inflating him. Stitches manages to pump enough air into Richie to cause his head to explode. Vinnie, on discovering Tommy to be telling the truth, attempts to leave, but Stitches attacks them. Tommy stabs him, Vinnie covers him with a blanket, and they escape. Tommy and Vinnie rescue Kate, but Stitches knocks her unconscious as they attempt to escape. Tom tries to resuscitate her, and Vinnie leaves them behind, and Stitches attempts to drown Tommy in a sink that Vinnie had previously vomited in. Kate awakens and throws a knife at Stitches, while Tommy deduces a manner in which to defeat the clown; to kill him, they must destroy the egg he kept in his van. Tommy and Kate, pursued by Stitches, make their way to the den in the graveyard. While hiding, Tommy begins to hiccup, and Kate kisses him in order for him to stay quiet and hidden. Tommy searches for Stitches' egg among a collection of them while Kate keeps an eye out for Stitches, but the pair are soon discovered by him. While deciding which of the two to kill, Vinnie ties Stitches' shoelaces together again. He trips, and drops his egg. Tommy forces Stitches to smash the egg, and Stitches explodes in a mixture of magic trick supplies and yolk.

Six months later, Tommy has moved to a new house and is dating Kate. While the couple are in Tommy's old treehouse, Kate gives Tommy a new telescope, and his old one is positioned so as to focus on the den in the graveyard. There, The Motley is attempting to piece Stitches' broken egg back together while receiving fellatio. The egg is now fully restored indicating that Stitches will return. After the film cuts to black, Stitches' catchphrase, "Everybody happy?", is heard.

Production

McMahon began working on Stitches after receiving a €600,000 grant from the Irish Film Board, also utilizing funding from MEDIA Europe. Filming for the movie took place in Ireland.

Soundtrack

The score was composed by Paul McDonnell. "Dream Conjecture" was written and performed by Jonathan van Atom. The film's soundtrack also features the 1986 song "(I Just) Died in Your Arms" by the English rock band Cutting Crew.

Release

Stitches premiered in Dublin, Ireland in September 2012. It received a limited theatrical release in the U.S. under the distributor Dark Sky Films, and in Japan under Shochiku. The Japanese title of the film translates as The Dead Clown Goes Mad. In France, the film's title is Dark Clown.

Critical reception

Generally the film received positive reviews from genre and horror publications and websites. It received three out of five stars in The Sunday Times. Starburst rated it 6/10 stars. Entertainment.ie rated it three stars and commented on the influence of "80s slasher flicks" on the film. Bloody Disgusting wrote that the film was "destined to become a cult classic" and carried "heavy replay value". Dread Central in particular praised the movie's kill scenes, calling them "brilliant" and remarking that they were done "with such a rigorous sense of care and detail". Criticisms for the movie revolved around the film being "an incredibly low budget production" and the plot being "nowhere near as fun as it sounds on paper". The Screen Daily commented that the "horror stuff is obvious, but staged with showstopping flair and buckets of blood".