Terrifier 2

Terrifier 2, a 138-minute (!) slasher flick about a murderous clown, drew attention for the fact that viewers reportedly vomited and fainted at its screenings, while it scored a surprising 86% on Rotten Tomatoes and was even praised by Stephen King himself. The $250,000 independent film, financed through crowdfunding, made its way into the horror mainstream and grossed $6 million in its first three days. The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity did something similar, but in this case it's an extremely brutal "video nasty" gorefest that has absolutely no inhibitions and still remains "unrated" in the US. You wouldn't want to describe in polite company the things that happen in this film. It stands primarily on imaginative perversity, first-rate practical effects, which the makers sent out at the request of the fans to fight for an Oscar, and a terrifyingly grotesque performance by David Howard Thornton as Art the Clown, basically a kind of silent, pantomime Freddy Krueger. A wild, outrageous and extremely disturbing old-school grindhouse for gore movie lovers only and for those who want to test the limits of their jadedness. (24/11/2023)

Art is Back! Terrifier 2 has been a huge success overseas. It is even one of the highest rated horror films of the year on Imdb, and there are articles in the newspapers about how American audiences are vomiting and fleeing the cinemas, which is of course a marketing ploy that shows up once a year for at least one horror film. Terrifier 2 is slightly better than the first. Damien Leone can conjure up some decent stuff for little money, and given the success of the second installment, he could do a little more ambitious work in the third. What's nice about it is the 1970-80s retro look, you can see a trashy B-movie from a bygone era that you don't see much of nowadays, but there's a lot of honest effort in this one. Art is a pretty iconic character that could be lumped in with Jason, Myers and others. I'm a bit disappointed that he is silent throughout the film, if he'd dropped wisecracks while doing his thing I'd probably be happier. Anyway, he's twisted in a big way and does nasty things to his victims. The bed scene is the definite highlight of the film! He scalps a woman, breaks her and rips off all her limbs, skins her and salts her! Mortal Kombat fatality, you can't make that up! I'll definitely remember this for a long time! The gore is good, it pays homage to Fulci and Savini, sometimes you can see it’s a dummy, but it's not downright annoying like in other movies. The finale in the haunted house is also awesome due to the interesting setting, and it must be noted that the little creepy girl is the scariest part of the whole film. The main character is likeable, the music is okay, so even though it could have been half an hour shorter and some of the dialogue was slightly painful, I didn't mind it at all. This year, along with The Sadness, a clear must-see gore ride for the Better Ones, the Evolved Ones, the Chosen Ones who give the middle finger to all those intellectual fuckers and art nerds. 8/10. (24/10/2022)

It's insanely long and not bound by any rules of a fictional world that stands somewhere between realistic, mythological, comic and genre. Terrifier 2 deserves a medal not only for its violence, where the resident villain literally destroys his victims, but also for its extreme take on the concept started by the first Halloween. Art the Clown, obviously a supernatural being, walks around town on Halloween, everyone thinks he's a freak in a mask (a freak in the mask of a brutal killer who became a bit of a celebrity after the events of the first film), and no one questions the fact that he's out trick-or-treating like any playful kid. But Art plays it a little differently and Damien Leone, especially in the middle section, stages incredibly cheesy scenes that I would call the pinnacle of black-humour horror. It is a complete fusion of a folkloric (hence genre) myth with a costume that is actually represented spuriously in horror films – instead of creating a mystical identity, the costume merely conceals it and allows it to commit terrible atrocities unnoticed. This relationship to pop culture permeates the entire film, in which the heroine rises thanks to her self-made costume. Terrifier 2 isn't very good in terms of pacing, but it does a great job of picking up on the societal fascination with the scary things that can lurk behind the festive facade of Halloween or other spiritual traditions. And Halloween and other horror franchises don't need parroting to do this, but rather building an original world and transforming clichés into a modern evolutionary line of grindhouse horror. The amazing earnings from the US speak for themselves. 70 % (08/12/2022)

On the one hand, it is admirable what Damien Leone was able to create with a microbudget. Not only does Terrifier 2 have a significant amount of lavish gore (which was widely expected), but it also looks good. Sure, the low budget is evident, but the film does have a certain aesthetic, beautiful shots in their own way, stylish production design... it's not fair to condemn it with the idea that it's just cheap bloody shit/junk. On the other hand, they should have been a bit more reasonable, because this film didn’t have to be 140 (!!!) minutes long. I appreciate the attempts to cram in some story, some mythology, but for God's sake, hurry up! Sometimes whole scenes could have been left in the editing room, sometimes it would have been enough to shorten individual shots, it would have only helped the film. Give me a forty-minute shorter cut and I'll throw in a fourth star. 7/10 (22/10/2022)