Clinger (2015)

I’ve been watching a lot of horror lately, it seems.  Well, this was a little bit of a backlog that I finally got around to sit down and review. Clinger is a horror comedy that I first heard over from Darren over at Movie Reviews 101 and he enjoyed it quite a bit.  It had me fully intrigued since I’m always down for a decent horror comedy since it usually promises a lot of fun.

Let’s check this out! 🙂

Clinger (2015)

Director: Michael Steves

Cast: Vincent Martella, Jennifer Laporte, Julia Aks, Shonna Major

When her possessive high school boyfriend dies in a gruesome accident, Fern Petersen’s life is thrown into turmoil. Things go from bad to worse when he returns as a love-sick ghost to kill her so they can be together for eternity. – Rotten Tomatoes

The only way I can think of describing Clinger is odd. However, it isn’t a bad way completely. There was a lot of awkwardly fun parts that I look back and realize that it was really funny. It did take a little while to warm up to at the beginning. Maybe its because it has a certain exaggerated reality of the high school puppy love from the overly exposed lovey dovey silliness. That in itself has a humorous  and entertaining take.  The main issue I had with this was the pacing and tone. One those two were established and the scenario was set up, Clinger was a fun and still awkward in a good way piece of horror comedy. The second half definitely held me a lot more than the first half. It has to do with having more action and just more going on. The first half did give the characters foundation of who they are and what their personalities are.

On the note of characters, there wasn’t a lot of them but the ones that showed up were done well. Some of them were really weird.  Our main characters, Fern and Robert are actually rather endearing to watch.  Both of their characters are quite fun to watch their relationship evolve and devolve into what it becomes. The third act is a little out of left field but it works to make this  more thrilling experience.  The most awkward of the characters has to go to the sister’s boyfriend which I wasn’t quite sure was just disturbing and not so my type of humor.

Clinger has a fresh angle to the ghost story.  Its fun and has some entertaining bits.  Its not too creepy and I’m not sure its really too funny either but it has heart and I can appreciate it for that.  The main characters are good and the ideas are pretty okay.  I think the main issue is that while I had a few laughs, I spent most of it feeling like this wasn’t my sort of movie. I feel like there are lots of people that would like it more than I would but something didn’t quite work for me.   You know that feeling where you know something doesn’t quite work but you can’t pinpoint what it is? That is what it felt like when I finished this and its why it took me a few weeks before sitting down and writing about it. In the end, its an indifference that I felt.  I was a little meh and then had a few chuckles and then enjoyed the finale quite a bit.  The story was okay and the acting was fun but then if you asked if I’d sit down to watch this again, I might not.

Clinger will succeed for those who enjoy this type of humor.  Except this just doesn’t quite hit it for the most part for me. I appreciated it for what it is and there are some good ideas here that could be a good watch for a rainy day.

Have you seen Clinger? What do you think about it?

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