Kent McCoy is a loving husband and father who hosts a birthday party for his son Jack. However, the clown assigned to their party is unable to make it due to a scheduling error. Fortunately, Kent discovers an old clown costume in the basement of a house he is selling and puts it on. After the party, Kent falls asleep wearing the costume, and the next morning finds he is unable to take it off. Kent is forced to go to work wearing the costume and tries to remove it, cutting his wrist with a knife and breaking a vibrating hand saw. He comes back home and complains about the situation with his wife Meg. She is able to remove the fake nose, but wounds him in the process. The family dog, Shadow, accidentally eats the fake nose. Meg also realizes the clown's wig has become Kent's real hair. Kent starts to exhibit strange behavior and experiences a deep sense of hunger, eating all the food in the house. Kent enlists the help of Herbert Karlsson, the suit's previous owner. Karlsson begs him not to touch the costume, but after learning Kent is already wearing it, insists on meeting him at the old costume warehouse. Kent learns that the costume is actually the hair and skin of an ancient Icelandic demon called the "Clöyne". Karlsson drugs Kent with tea, revealing that the only way to prevent the metamorphosis is to sever the wearer's head. Kent fights back and subdues Karlsson, and while driving him to the police station to report the assault, his fingers and toes begin to grow excessively, causing him to crash the car. Kent decides to try and kill himself, and goes to one of his properties. He shoots himself in the mouth, spattering the wall with rainbow blood, but quickly regenerates and survives. He then meets a child who attempts to befriend him. Kent attempts to behead himself with a pair of buzzsaws, but in a fluke accident one of the buzzsaws flies off its handle, killing the boy. Kent realises he wants to eat the child, and does so just before Meg finds him. Once at home, Kent tells Meg to chain him up in the basement, telling her not to let him out. Kent learns from Jack that one of his classmates Colton had bullied him at school. Kent finds the bully's home, kills him and then eats him. Karlsson tells Meg that the wearer can only remove the suit after eating five children. She also learns that many years ago, Karlsson put on the costume to entertain the children at an oncology clinic where his brother Martin worked. To free his brother, Martin smuggled out five terminally ill children from the cancer ward to feed the demon. After Karlsson was freed from the costume, the brothers tried and failed to destroy it. Kent succumbs to the demon and sneaks into a local Chuck E. Cheese's where he devours one child in the ballpit and another in the tubes. Blood flowing down the slide causes a panic and the playzone is evacuated. Meg finds Kent inside the glow in the darkminigolf course. Karlsson attempts to decapitate him with an axe but fails. Before Kent has a chance to kill Karlsson, Meg tries to get through to her husband. Instead, the demon orders her to find and feed him one more child in order to release Kent. She must bring the fifth child to their "special place", otherwise the Clöyne will find and kill Jack. The Clöyne sneaks into the house and kills Meg's father, Walt, ripping off his jaw. Meg fights against him, but the demon attempts to devour their unborn baby from her womb. After cutting through the demon's neck, Meg knocks his head off with a hammer and apologizes to Jack for everything. However, due to a muscle still attached to the body, the Clöyne revives, grabs Jack's leg and Meg finally rips off the demon's head, killing both the demon and her husband. She looks in horror while embracing her son as the Clöyne's skin melts away revealing Kent decapitated inside. The film ends as the costume is packed away by the police as evidence.
In November 2010, Jon Watts and Christopher D. Ford uploaded a fake trailer to YouTube that announced Eli Roth would produce the film; Roth was not involved at the time. Roth spoke about the film, saying: "I loved how ballsy they were, issuing a trailer that said, 'From the Master of Horror, Eli Roth.' Some people thought I'd made the movie, or that it was another fake Grindhouse trailer... I really felt these guys deserved a shot, and that people are truly freaked out by evil clowns. It's new territory to make this a version of The Fly, where this guy can feel himself changing, blacking out only to find blood all over his clown suit. You're sympathetic toward a monster until the monster actually takes over." Principal photography began in November 2012 in Ottawa. Roth joined as a producer, and Watts directed the film based on a screenplay co-written with Ford.
Soundtrack
Matt Veligdan composed the film's score, and eight songs were featured on its soundtrack.
In September 2012, Dimension Films and FilmNation Entertainment acquired distribution rights to the film. The film was released on November 13, 2014 in Italy. The UK premiere was February 27, 2015, in Scotland at FrightFest Glasgow 2015, followed by the DVD and Blu-ray release March 2, 2015. The film was also released in the Philippines on March 25, 2015 and in Mexico on May 22, 2015. After being delayed, the film was released in the United States on June 17, 2016.
Critical response
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 46% based on 24 reviews, and an average rating of 4.65/10. Dominic Cuthbert of Starburst rated it 7/10 stars and wrote, "Clown may be formulaic and filled up to the guts with familiar tropes, but it is tremendous fun and an effective body horror." Howard Gorman of Scream magazine rated it 5/5 stars and wrote, "With Clown the filmmakers have created an all-new monster of demonic proportions and it's a concept that certainly deserves to spawn a sequel or two as the sky really is the limit." Jeremy Aspinall of the Radio Times rated it 2/5 stars and described it as "efficiently put together if a little sedate in pace". Anton Bitel of Little White Lies wrote that the film doubles as an equally harrowing story of "a family man's losing struggle with his own paedophiliac impulses". Brad Miska of Bloody Disgusting rated it 3/5 stars and wrote, "Even though it's mostly a bore, there's still some really cool and fun stuff scattered throughout." Keri O'Shea of Brutal as Hell wrote, "Neither frightening nor funny, here's another lesson to prove that fake trailers are often fine just as they are." Joel Harley of HorrorTalk rated it 2/5 stars and wrote, "What could have been one of the few great killer clown movies winds up as yet another disappointment, being too uneven in tone and pace to be considered a success."
