The end of the world comes at you fast. Sometimes it’s a meteor, sometimes it’s a geostorm. And sometimes – very, very occasionally – it’s socially awkward and basically rubbish clowns. Well, to be fair to the socially awkward and basically rubbish clowns, it doesn’t look like it’s their fault, at least – in the first trailer for end of days comedy Apocalypse Clown, everything’s fallen apart. The national grid is down, trains have derailed, and across Ireland, survivors of whatever’s happened are trying to muddle along. Watch it below:
David Earl, last seen building cinema’s cutest (and probably only) sentient robot with a washing machine for a tummy in Brian And Charles, is Bobo, a clown who pines after his ex-partner Jenny (Amy De Bhrún) and tags along with fellow clowns Funzo (Natalie Palamides) and Pepe (Fionn Foley). Food is scarce, and opportunities for custard pies in the face are scarcer still. There’s good news among the whole societal collapse thing though. Now everyone who’s still alive can’t get on TikTok – or anything else, for that matter – the clowns spy a chance to form a troupe make themselves indispensable to humanity again. “Everything is obsolete,” says Bobo, “except us!”
Bobo also spies a chance to try to convince his old flame Jenny that he’s worth getting back with for the remainder of their squalid, desperate existences, and there’s sight of a clown dressed in a surprisingly convincing Ed the Duck costume, which looks worth the price of entry alone.
Directed and co-written by George Kane, who worked on the under-appreciated Timewasters and Crashing, Apocalypse Clown comes honking and tumbling out of its very small car and into cinemas on 1 September. You can also read an exclusive interview with Kane about his catastrophe comedy in the Rebel Moon issue of Empire, on sale Thursday 6 July.