Cinemetal

Watch a Clip from Officer Downe, the Feature Length Directorial Debut from Slipknot’s Clown

  • Axl Rosenberg
0

It was just about three years ago that Slipknot keg basher Shawn “Clown” Crahan, who has been directing silly music videos for some time now, announced that he would now direct his first silly feature film: Officer Downe, based on a comic book about “about an LA supercop routinely killed in the line of fire who’s resurrected and sent back out into the fray time after time.” At the time of the announcement, I was pretty flip with regards to the chances of the movie being any good; now that I’ve seen this clip from the film, though, I plan to be extremely flip with regards to the chances of the movie being any good.

Okay, so here’s my question: what is the tone of this movie??? Is it scary? Campy? Exciting? Not that a film can’t be all of those things — there’s a Korean movie out now called The Wailing that will make you laugh, make you weep, and disturb you to your core — but this clip isn’t any of those things, really. It has the general tone of a Saw movie and borrows some tricks from modern action directors like Timur Bekmambetov and Ruben Fleischer; but I also can’t imagine it was meant to be taken that seriously, which is a problem, because nothing in the clip is actually funny. And that’s a big problem: tone is a HUGE issue to consider when making a film, and failing to properly blend tones can lead to some serious issues. A recent example: remember when one of the heroes of Batman v Superman violently burned a man alive and then cracked wise? Did you hear anyone in your theater chuckling at that moment? Yeah. It’s a tricky thing, blending tones, and this clip hasn’t pulled it off.

Hopefully, in context, the scene makes a lot more sense, and the film has far fewer tonal issues.

But I’m not optimistic.

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