JITTERS

AI and edgelord clowns. Separately, they’ve become a plague sweeping modern filmmaking. Combined, they make up Marc Zammit’s Jitters.

More hard-boiled detective drama than horror film, its story follows long-suffering police officer Collymore (Fabrizio Santino), who’s become obsessed with his work in a desperate attempt to forget past trauma and failings.

Bully for his young daughter, who’s left out in the cold as Collymore’s obsession grows, like a doomed detective from a Saw film. When he investigates the unexplained death of a young woman, Collymore comes to suspect that the killer might be something more than human. Or less, depending on your perspective. Lurking on the dark web is AI-generated clown Jitters (Daniel Jordan), a cross between Freddy Krueger, Jigsaw and the Lawnmower Man.

To address the elephant in the room, no, Jitters hasn’t really generated its villain from AI. Jordan’s killer clown is extremely human, from legitimately unsettling performance to the ridiculously Doctor Who device he wears on his head. Sighs of relief all around, then.

A cliché story left over from the early 2000s (think Fear Dot Com) filtered through the doldrums of low-budget cinema. Filler dialogue, wooden performances and uninspiring digital cinematography – it’s all there. None of this criticism extends to Jitters himself; a horror villain that’s head and shoulders above the rest of the film. Jitters might be a chore whenever the killer clown’s not around, but when he is, the film truly lights up. It’s worth it for that final sequence alone.

Jitters is a mess, but there’s something human about its failings. While it’s far from human-created art’s finest hour, it’s uniquely flawed in a way that no AI could ever generate.

JITTERS is out on digital in the UK now.