Horror comedies are not as easy to produce as they seem. Too much horror and the laughs will feel out of place; too much comedy and you won’t take the scares seriously. There’s also a minimum level of drama necessary to make the audience feel for the characters, as long as it doesn’t disrupt the fun. With Michael Steves’ Clinger, all three of these elements are just barely there as the film’s decent premise is weighed down by mediocre execution.
The story follows Jennifer Laporte as Fern, an aspirant neuroscientist and high schooler that starts dating Robert Klingher, (played by Vincent Martella, of Everybody Hates Chris fame) an awkward and clingy classmate who’s been in love with her since the fifth grade. After Robert is killed in a bizarre accident of his own making, he returns to haunt guilt-ridden Fern as a deranged and jealous ghost. Enlisting the help of supernatural expert Valeria Kingsley, played by Alicia Monet Caldwell, Fern tries to find a way to exorcise her annoying ex to the afterlife for good.
This sounds like a decent enough plot on paper, and perhaps in more skilled hands (or maybe with a larger budget) it could have worked, but that’s just not the case with Clinger. Almost all the interesting elements of the script are ruined by poor execution and little attention to detail. Some extremely awful computer effects and generic direction make this seem like an exceptionally gory after-school special.
Budget constraints are certainly to blame for some of the more technical demerits, but the amateurish acting is inexcusable here. Even some of the more well-known actors have trouble getting through stiff dialogue and unconvincing drama. Though there are actual young people onscreen, you don’t feel at any point that these are real teenagers with real problems. I know these aren’t A-list award-winning thespians, but there’s a certain level of quality necessary to take the characters seriously. Laporte is definitely the best of the bunch in this case, though her performance is still hindered by the shoddy script.
However, there are few genuinely good moments lost amongst the rest of the film. The premise is interesting enough to begin with, though some of the allegory may have been too explicit. There were also a couple of deeply heartfelt scenes commenting on the nature of first love and how to deal with heartbreak. Even though the film was disappointingly vague concerning the rules of the undead most of the time, there were some interesting scenes involving other ghosts that hinted at unexplored potential hidden within this aspect of the story.
In the end, most of the humor still falls flat and the horror is regrettably sup-par, but the film is not a total waste of time. Clinger does have a certain charm to it, even though the negatives far outweigh the positives. The writing, though uninspired, has a touch of John Hughes with the quirky characters, not to mention some chuckle-worthy dark humor involving some of the murderous ghosts. Given that this is Michael Steves’ first feature film, many of these faults can be forgiven. That still doesn’t make this a good movie, however, only not entirely awful.