Year released: 2015
THE CHARGE: Being the only horror movie I know of that's named after dingleberries.
THE EVIDENCE: Peanut butter and chocolate. Beer and pretzels. Jennifer Lopez and Judge Hammer. They're all examples of things that go great together. Clinger wants to check if the same applies to to teen Disney comedies and graphic horror, and the results are pretty much what you'd expect.
Fern is a high school senior trying to earn a track scholarship to MIT because when I think of world class college track squads, MIT is at the top of the list. She's never had a serious romantic relationship until she meets Robert, who has a geeky nerdiness that's rather cute and lovable rather than being totally creepy. That is, until he starts acting totally creepy by celebrating every weekly anniversary of their relationship.
After a couple of months of this nonsense, Fern prepares to break up with Robert. But Robert does her one better by accidentally decapitating himself while trying to show her how much he loves her. Fern is wracked with guilt, and things don't get any easier for her when Robert's ghost shows up to continue his declarations of love for her.
Fern's guilt leads her to try to have a relationship with the ectoplasmic Robert, even going so far as to have her "first time" with him. And when his behavior leads Fern to remember why she wanted to break up with him in the first place, she does so with the typical "It's not you, it's me" speech. Surprisingly, Robert completely understands. He understands that he's dead and Fern's alive. They're from two differnet worlds now. And for their relationship to ultimately work, Robert decides he has to kill Fern to bring her into his world, where they can be together forever.
Even JJ Abrams thinks this is excessive lens flare.
I loved the premise of this movie. A supernatural Fatal Attraction sounded like a wonderfully fresh idea to me. But where I imagined Cupid starring in Final Destination, Clinger instead gave me Lizzie McGuire starring in Dawn of the Dorks.
Despite some rather gruesome deaths and copious f-bombs dropped throughout the film, the whole production has the look of a teen Disney comedy. All the teenagers are wholesome and innocent. They trade goofy quips and unintentional double entendres. Even the requisite jock characters seem to get along just fine with everyone else. It's all very weird in a non-horrific Stepford Wives kind of way, and it doesn't seem to be a subtext that the movie was really aiming for.
"Yes there's a fire in my pants, but I'm also glad to see you."
Hell, in the climax of the movie, when Robert and a small army of ghostly friends attack Fern and her buddies, the good guys fight back with modified super soakers. It's so Disneyish that I expected to hear Hannah Montana on the soundtrack.
But then there's all the blood and the guts and the swearing... it creates such a tonal dichotomy that the movie ends up being neither scary nor funny. It's just... awkward.
The movie's not a total disaster though. The production has a clean look that's a step above the plethora of zero-budget horror flicks flooding the market. And Jennifer Laporte and Vincent Martella play really well off each other as Fern and Robert. Plus, they actually look like they could be high school students. Unfortunately, their supporting cast is only around to provide cartoonish reaction shots, and everyone's so gosh-darn gee-whiz likeable that it's hard to take the movie's horror elements seriously.
Clinger certainly deserves credit for trying something different. But "different" doesn't automatically mean "good".
THE VERDICT: Clinger is GUILTY of trying to be a transition into horror comedy for teens but ending up too violent for that audience and too cutesy for anyone else.
