Le Queloune tells the heartwarming story of Patrice Le Vignoble, a dead clown who wakes up in his grave, discovers he likes the taste of flesh and proceeds to go on a killing spree. He’s like John Wayne Gacy meets Jeffrey Dahmer, but undead. I didn’t like the film as much as Brandi Hines’s similarly themed short Charlie, which opened the 2008 NYC Horror Film Fest. But Le Queloune isn’t really a horror movie. It’s designed as a farce – a bloody one at that.

From the opening scene, in which we see kids making Coke explode in a graveyard by mixing it with Mentos, this is clearly the work of Patrick Boivin (Radio, This and everything else). The scene not only shows off his mischievous side, but also displays his technical virtuosity. As the soda drips down to Patrice’s grave, Boivin’s camera follows it one bravura trick shot.

This is definitely an intriguing take on the zombie origin story. Boivin puts a fresh spin on the genre by telling the story entirely from Patrice’s point of view. He discovers he likes the taste of flesh by trying a piece of his own. (Of course!) Then he moves into the kitchen to fry up the neighbors. This is twisted, ingenious stuff.

But mostly it’s just funny, often in a stomach-churning sort of way. Patrice is funny because he’s extremely lazy – he takes at least day to climb out of his grave after he wakes up. It’s not his fault that he literally looks like death warmed over, or that his new diet consists of killing people. Boivin’s humorous approach is as infectious as a flesh-eating virus.