Killjoy (2000)

Movie Info

This is how Killjoy rolls

Bullied and angry, Michael (Jamal Grimes) summons a demon called Killjoy (Ángel Vargas) to deal with the gang members threatening him over a girl named Jada (Vera Yell).  When Michael is kidnapped and killed by Lorenzo (William L. Johnson) and his friends, Killjoy is unleashed!  A year later, Jada has a new boyfriend named Jamal (Lee Marks) and with her friend Monique (D Austin), finds herself the target of Killjoy along with Lorenzo.  Killjoy must be stopped before it is too late and Jada becomes his next victim!

Directed by Craig Ross, Killjoy is a low-budget horror thriller.  The film was distributed by Full Moon Entertainment and received poor reviews.

Full Moon movies were a dirty pleasure.  They were always cheap, often showed potential, and were pumped out at a rate that you could see a different one each weekend and still have more to rent.  Killjoy was near the end of the initial Full Moon run and I didn’t see it until it was included as part of a Puppet Master pack…I could have done without it.

Ok…why not just have the actor who played the kid play Killjoy…makes more sense…

The story is all over the place and loaded with poorly executed horror clichés.  If Killjoy had just been the deceased Michael, it would have made a bit more sense, but instead, he’s a potentially supernatural demon who lives in an ice cream truck (a la PlayStation’s Sweet Tooth from Twisted Metal).  The truck is a portal to his lair…which is a warehouse?  The story is so uninspired that there are even portions when the actors seem exasperated that Killjoy has come back…fear isn’t the reaction.  You even get an “it’s only a dream” ending…I agree it feels like a nightmare.

I hope, hope, hope that the cast is mostly made up of friends of the director or the screenwriter or something because everyone is so wooden in their roles.  The clunky dialogue is delivered (or just read) with little emotion or understanding of what the characters even mean when they say it.  A killer clown should be scary but Killjoy just comes off as a rotten substitute for a Freddy Krueger rip-off (aka not even a rip-off of the real Freddy…or even the remake Freddy).

Oh…and now we’re in a warehouse (but an EVIL warehouse)

The visuals also are lacking.  The special effects look like weak versions of some After Effects program and the sets are even more non-descript (like the Killjoy warehouse which is a warehouse set with boxes and some chain link fences).  My favor effect is the “enter Killjoy’s world” effect which just has the people thumping down in superhero stance in the warehouse after entering Killjoy’s truck.

Killjoy is awful.  It isn’t even so-bad-it-is-good.  The movie feels like the ultimate of laziness, and it is just filler.  If it was horrific or gory, it would at least be something, but Killjoy instead feels like inedible paste that doesn’t inspire, scare, or impress.  The fact it is about a scary clown shows how badly the filmmakers failed…scary clowns normal score.  Killjoy was followed by Killjoy 2:  Deliverance from Evil in 2002.

Related Links:

Killjoy 2:  Deliverance from Evil (2002)

Killjoy 3 (2010)