Movie Review: "Amusement" (2009)

"Amusement," directed by John Simpson, was released on DVD in 2009. The idea of a revenge horror anthology sounded promising, but in the end viewers understand why the film didn't receive a huge box office release. "Amusement" begins with Shelby and her boyfriend meeting a creepy and overly chatty man at a gas station, where a trucker (who is harboring a girl in his truck) tells them that the highway is backed up. He suggests they follow him, and the creepy guy who is also filling up his tank convinces Shelby's boyfriend to join the convoy. Along the way the girl in the transfer truck jumps out, hits the windshield, and both Shelby's boyfriend and the creepy man try to help her. In the end of this vignette, the creepy man ends up killing the trucker and Shelby's boyfriend discovers Shelby and the injured girl in the back of his car outside of a rural old house, as this was all part of the creepy man's master plan to abduct Shelby.

Then viewers get Tabitha's story. Tabitha is babysitting at her aunt's house, forced to sleep in the guest room which contains hundreds of clowns, including a human-sized clown sitting in a rocking chair. This part of the film tries to build suspense as Tabitha comes very close to unmasking the clown just to see if it's real several times, but never does even though the accordion in his hands makes noise a few times. This winds up being Tabitha's downfall, as the clown rises and chases her into a storage shed. When she wakes up she's in an FBI interrogation room which looks more like a catacomb or an abandoned building. A female psychiatrist comes in to question her and mentions that Shelby and another girl, Lisa, are both there as well. The three girls had been abducted and the psychiatrist makes a connection between the girls, their hometown, and a former patient who had a very distinctive laugh. The doctor gets up to find cell phone reception and that's the last time she's seen alive.

Lisa had been abducted while searching for another friend who had met a guy staying at a very bizarre hotel and failed to come home. She and her boyfriend stake out the hotel for hours before he uses his Health Department badge to enter. The owner of the hotel is dressed in an apron and looks like a mad scientist, which doesn't alarm the boyfriend much. The hotel, while containing some very interesting gadgets and furnishings, is obviously not being used for its intended purposes and the boyfriend meets his fate while looking into a rigged Victrola. Instead of doing the logical thing, Lisa sneaks into the hotel where she stumbles upon her friend upstairs along with several other dead people tied with wiring to the beds. A deaf "resident" pretends to help her, but he turns out to be the hotel owner.

The creepy man from the gas station and the hotel owner are the same person, and as Tabitha has childhood flashbacks, the reason why he is seeking revenge on the three girls comes to light. They were assigned to create shadowboxes for class. The girls' were very elaborate for childhood projects, but provided viewers with some of the most stunning visuals from the movie. Owen's shadowbox contained a rat, still alive and split down the abdomen, hanging inside. Tabitha tells Owen she doesn't think his project is funny and he ends up institutionalized.

The remainder of the movie is spent on the girls trying to escape from Owen's evil underground lair and menacing laughter without being eviscerated or worse.

This atmospheric movie could have been much better if the plot and characters weren't so underdeveloped. Little is known about Owen, other than that he tortured one rat and went to the mental hospital. The FBI interrogation scene didn't make much sense, as we don't know why the doctor consented to go underground in what obviously not a police station. The film relied too much on unbelievable horror movie clichés, and not in a tongue-in-cheek way.