Jitters (2026) (Blu-ray Review)
Directed By: Marc Zammit
Starring: Richard Wisker, Guillaume Rivaud, Boo Miller
Rated: 15 (UK)/Region B/2:40/1080p/Number of Discs 1
Available from 101 Films
The horror genre’s latest obsession appears to be combining killer clowns with artificial intelligence, because apparently regular killer clowns just weren’t stressful enough anymore. Enter Jitters (2026), directed by Marc Zammit, a film that asks the important question: “What if your worst fears were controlled by a murderous AI clown?” It’s a premise that sounds like it was created by feeding a dozen horror movies into ChatGPT and seeing what happened.
To the film’s credit, that’s actually a pretty fun idea.
The story follows Detective Collymore as he investigates a mysterious death that leads him to an AI-driven horror game called Jitters, where players find themselves confronted by manifestations of their deepest fears and a very unpleasant clown with far too much free time on his hands.
Now let’s talk about Jitters himself.
The horror world is absolutely drowning in killer clowns these days. Pennywise is still sitting on the throne. Art the Clown is busy traumatizing audiences. Every indie filmmaker with access to face paint seems contractually obligated to create their own nightmare jester. Somehow, Jitters still manages to carve out a little personality thanks to Daniel Jordan’s committed performance. The character is weird, theatrical, over-the-top, and just unsettling enough to keep things interesting.
The movie is at its best when it embraces the madness. The hallucination sequences, nightmare imagery, and AI-gone-wrong concepts give the film some genuinely creepy moments. There are scenes where you can see the filmmakers reaching beyond their budget and trying to create something ambitious, and I always appreciate that. Horror has been built on filmmakers biting off more than they can chew and somehow making it work anyway.
The problem is that Jitters occasionally feels like it has the same condition as its title.
It jitters.
The movie bounces between police procedural, psychological horror, AI cautionary tale, family drama, killer clown movie, and mystery thriller so often that it sometimes feels like five different screenplays got trapped in the same hard drive. Every time the film starts settling into one lane, it swerves into another.
Still, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t entertained.
There’s a certain charm to a movie that throws this many ideas at the wall. Not all of them stick, but at least nobody involved was accused of playing it safe. In an era where so many horror films feel assembled from the same template, Jitters has enough weirdness to stand out.
The performances are solid, the concept is fun, and the practical effects work deserves praise. You can tell the filmmakers were trying to create a memorable villain and a larger world rather than simply delivering another disposable streaming horror movie.
At the end of the day, Jitters is the kind of scrappy indie horror film that’s easy to root for. Is it messy? Absolutely. Does it occasionally feel like somebody shuffled the script pages? Maybe. But it’s also ambitious, entertaining, and weird enough to leave an impression.
And honestly, in a genre currently populated by approximately 47 killer clowns, that’s an achievement in itself.
Extras
- Trailer
