Writers: Gabi Chennisi Duncombe, Bubba Fish, Michael Steves
Director: Michael Steves
As if breakups weren’t messy enough…
Clinger is a comedy romance horror that – despite the unfortunate title – is mercifully free of scatalogical elements.
The main character is Fern (Jennifer Laporte), a top high school student and athlete. She meets fellow student Robert (Vincent Martella) and the two develop a relationship. It’s all very cutesy but also sufficiently humorous that for the most part it stays on the right side of the sickening line.
As time goes on it becomes clear that Robert’s attraction for Fern has become unhealthily obsessive. Meanwhile Fern is thinking about breaking up. Things come to a head when Robert dies in a most amusing way.
But Robert isn’t content to just fade away, he wants to be with his girlfriend. Guilt ridden Fern learns from her athletics coach Valeria (Alicia Monet Caldwell) – who just happens to be a ghost hunter – that Robert is now a ‘love ghost’. She also learns how to summon him with a rather silly variant of the Bloody Mary ritual. This proves a mistake as Robert is even more obsessive in death than he was in life and things turn very nasty.
The most important thing to say about Clinger is that it’s actually ”funny”! It has some bizarre characters such as Fern’s sister Kelsey (Julia Aks) who runs a company providing therapy with glove puppets, and the Bible basher Moe (Shonna Major) who innocently spurts out masses of… double entendres. There are some nice visual gags and superb lines. This film actually had me laughing out loud, which is something few so-called comedies manage.
It does suffer a bit from pacing problems. There are some patches where laughs are thin on the ground and a bit more gagging up is needed. And whilst it avoids sentimentality it does come dangerously close at times, spending a rather too long on the romantic first two acts. The finale, whilst very good, could also have been a little tighter.
So Clinger isn’t perfect, but it is great fun.