Clown of the Dead aka Badoet aka Clown of the Damned (2015)
I prefer the original title Badoet but I just recently watched the Wild Eye Released dub cut of the film titles Clown of the Dead.
The first thing you will note is the voices of children are dubbed by adults making weird voices which will take a moment to get over before you can legit enjoy this film.
Sure this Indonesian film is a rip on IT with a backstory more like Nightmare on Elm Street but like the million of low budget IT and Freddy Rip offs, hell the millions of low budget killer clown movies, this one is actually pretty good. Likable characters in a large apartment complex next door to a nightly fair grounds houses a bunch of young families including their younger children. When two cousins notice the much younger children have been dieing off in the complex in weird ways they also notice the children have been drawing the face of a similar creepy clown. So yeah totally Freddy over Pennywise but I doubt the makers of this film thought it would go unnoticed.
The charm is in how little you see of the evil clown and how simple and likable the characters are. Well shot and refreshingly simple, very refreshing to see straight forward relatable non hollywood faces as well. The dark moments come quickly when we witness children death and the unsettling origin of the evil clowns past and reason for being, But none of these unsettling comments seem exploitative just simple to make the almost family friendly film seem honestly scary instead of just gross and upsetting. Badoet the clown mostly appears in the corner of your line of sight and does not do some weird dance to try to creep you out but instead drives you crazy and makes you wonder just what is going on. I am curious to see if a non dubbed cut of this film is any different as it has had a few releases by the look of it. If you can get over the dubbing (which I actually enjoyed, I thought the voices were suiting) I totally recommend this small and simple ghost story.
