Starring Angel Vargas, Vera Yell, Lee Marks, Dee Dee Austin, Jamal Grimes, Corey Hampton, Rani Goulant, Napiera Groves, Arthur Burghardt, William L. Johnson, Penny Ford, Carl Washington, Dionne Rochelle
Directed by Craig Ross Jr.
Expectations: Low, but if it’s a series, there has to be something good about it, right?
On the general scale:
On the B-Movie scale:
Going into Killjoy I knew nothing of the plot or what to expect. All I knew was that on every DVD cover I’d seen there was a scary clown with a wild look in his eyes. Full Moon’s modern series have been real hit or miss with me, so I expected the worst from Killjoy. Perhaps it was these tempered expectations, but Killjoy kept me entertained, made me laugh and horrified me at the same time; it was a resounding success. If you dig B-Movies and Blaxploitation films, then Killjoy is a low-budget entry you should definitely check out.
The film opens with the mild-mannered Michael asking Jada out to the prom. Jada and her friend Monique laugh him off, but when Jada’s boyfriend, the gang member Lorenzo, arrives with his homies, they beat the shit out of Michael for his transgression. Michael retreats home and resorts immediately to black magic, hoping to summon Killjoy from the depths to aid him in his revenge fantasy. While this is obviously not Pulitzer Prize material, Killjoy is well-written, if a bit clichéd, and its short runtime promises a film that never gets boring. In the world of low-budget horror, that counts for a lot.