CARNIVAL OF FEAR - Otherwise knwn as 'Closed for the Season'. Similar to my recent experience with 'The Vineyard' in that I felt stranded in someone else's dream, though less the sort of dream that impresses with its florid wierdness, more the common or garden kind which suffocates with a dull, rambling disconnectedness... I'm enough of a cine-masochist to actually be into this kind of hypnagogic lameness, and felt there were some OK bits of imagery scattered here and there, but the clown thing... guys, if you want to show us a sinister clown, then do something more than just show a clown being a bit sinister, if you know what I mean. For those misguided enough to potentially want to see this disjointed alternative to zolpidem, the plot concerns two twentysomethings searching for the roots of their childhood fairground-based trauma, and unfolds as a series of dream within a dream within a "Hey, did you just dream that?" type scenarios which quickly become annoying. A sinister clown guides them along to the baffling and not very interesting end. I'm dissing it, but something made me stick with it, and, although I didn't really enjoy it I guess I'm in a minority in saying I found it somehow likeable.
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