Least you think this year’s Six Weeks of Halloween were softening a bit too much, what with all the parodies and old standards, we jumped aboard the Terrifier franchise this week. Even amongst the horror dork crowd, this is a somewhat controversial series. There is definitely a school of thought that says that horror movies should push boundaries, be dangerous, make you feel miserable after watching. It’s… not especially my perspective, but I can respect the sentiment, and the Terrifier series, which makes the New French Extremity look like Pixar fluff, certainly qualifies.
I actually watched All Hallows’ Eve last year, and that’s the first film featuring Terrifier‘s fledgling horror icon, Art the Clown. It’s more of a demo-reel or proof-of-concept though, as it’s really just a fix-up collection of previously released short films with a poorly conceived wraparound narrative added after the fact. Inconsistent and slipshod, it had its moments and showed a little promise, but didn’t really move the needle. But writer/director Damien Leone soldiered on for years in obscurity, building a reputation amongst the horror extremophiles. When Terrifier 2 showed up in theaters after the Covid hangover and did surprisingly solid business (at least, relative to it’s paltry budget), more people started to take notice. Just this past week, Terrifier 3 debuted to #1 at the box office, beating out Joker 2 (which, to be fair, has been poorly received and experienced an 80% drop in its second week, but still, no one expected the unrated schlock sequel to beat the comic book sequel). So despite my reservations, I dove in the deep end this week, and watched all three Terrifier films.
Six Weeks of Halloween: Week 5 – Terrifiers
- All Hallows’ Eve (trailer)
- Driving Lessons – Deleted Scene from Halloween 1978 (short)
- The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror III: Clown Without Pity (Disney+)
Terrifier – Two women trying to get home on Halloween night get stranded and wait for their ride when they run afoul of a maniacal clown-costumed man named Art, who massacres everyone in his path, from pizza shop employees to janitors to homeless cat ladies.
Once again, it does still feel like we’re in demo-reel/proof-of-concept mode here, though this is more consistent and cohesive than the aforementioned All Hallows’ Eve. And there does seem to be an overarching purpose to this movie, which is to subvert nearly every horror trope in existence. Art the Clown is often referred to as a new slasher icon, but this movie really seems hostile to the general conventions. The only real exception is that the killer has a unique appearance and there’s creative violence and plentiful gore (including one particularly gnarly, mean-spirited kill), but beyond that, everything gets tweaked. There’s no tragedy of the past being revisited upon the present, no motivations, no harbingers, and the characters don’t even rise to the level of cardboard cutouts. At one point, when it appears that a character has gotten the jump on Art, he pulls out a gun and just shoots her (generally a no-no in slasher films, which mostly rely on, you know, slashing and bashing motions). Even the ostensible Final Girl doesn’t exactly count as a true Final Girl, given where she ends up (mild spoiler here, but her “victory” isn’t much of a victory).
There can be value in this sort of thing, but Terrifier veers perhaps a little too hard into its nihilistic extremity to be genuinely effective. There’s a reason so many of these things became conventions in the first place – they work.
It’s not all bad news though. David Howard Thornton plays Art the Clown with reckless abandon, and despite never talking, manages to express some level of personality and even a sorta sick, demented sense of humor. The scene at the pizza shop starts out genuinely creepy, and even later in the film, he does darkly humorous things like riding a tricycle and honking his little clown horn in a goofy way. I suspect his performance alone is what makes these early appearances notable.
Shot on a literal shoestring (something on the order of $35,000), it’s hard to fault the movie for its locations or some of its visual repetitiveness. They know where their bread is buttered though, putting most of their budget towards gory effects work, and that part of it is pretty well executed. As much as I don’t particularly care for the philosophy behind the movie, there was some thought put into it, and writer/director Damien Leone is clearly growing his talents, even if the movie remains somewhat shapeless. Ultimately, this is not my thing, but it has its moments. *1/2
- Thanksgiving (fake trailer)
- It (trailer)
- Hatchet (trailer)
Terrifier 2 – A year after the events of the first film, Art the Clown returns to stalk teenage Sienna and her younger brother Jonathan on Halloween. Together, they try to figure out who Art is and how they’re possibly connected.
While the first film was almost an anti-slasher, this one actually deigns to have something of a real narrative. You’ll noticed in my (still quite brief, let’s not get carried away) plot description above, I actually named a couple of characters. That’s because the film actually spends a surprising amount of time getting to know them, their family, and their friends. We even find out a little about Art, and he gets something of a sidekick in a creepy little Clown girl (we later learn that she may have been his first victim). To be clear, we’re not entering A24 elevated horror territory here or anything, but compared to the first film, this thing is like Citizen Kane.
There’s still plenty of subversion to be had. Art pulls out a gun again (on multiple occasions), his powers and that of his new sidekick are vaguely established (at best), and plenty of kills border on bad taste. This sort of thing is always a little hard to justify, but I dunno, I’ve read some history. We’re a species that invented all manner of gruesome torture devices and grotesque methods of dismemberment. I mean, sure, Art will cleave someone in half using a hacksaw in an acutely revolting manner, but we are the species that invented drawing and quartering. And as much as we might like to pretend, those tortures weren’t conducted by demonic Clowns.
The budget has increased, but is still quite low ($250k), but you see all of it onscreen. The settings are more varied and interesting, it’s visually more consistent and while it still has some of the digital sheen of modern filmmaking, it also gives off a bit of the throwback vibe it’s clearly going for. Damien Leone has clearly grown as a filmmaker, and he makes some surreal creative choices here that were unexpected. David Howard Thornton continues to evolve Art into a fledgling horror icon, and Leone gives him time and space to cook, especially in the early goings. A long sequence at a Halloween costume shop is quite effective and actually builds and releases tension the way horror movies should.
Of course, all of this comes at the expense of the runtime, which clocks in at an unwieldy 138 minutes. A judicious editing could perhaps bring it down to a more manageable length, but there is something to the shaggy dog nature of the proceedings that is effective. It may get a bit exhausting by the end, but it’s never boring. Indeed, the weird digressions and even the strangeness of the post credits sequence are part of what make it noteworthy. And unlike the previous films featuring Art, this is actually noteworthy. It’s still not for everyone and I find it hard to recommend, but there’s something here. This sort of mean-spirited nihilism is definitely not my favorite thing in the world, but there is some sort of alchemy at work here that’s interesting, even from the outside looking in. I can actually see why this movie has struck a chord. It’s a big leap forward creatively and I was genuinely curious to see where they’d take things. **1/2
- Black Christmas (trailer)
- Santa and Coke (Robot Chicken)
- Silent Night, Deadly Night (trailer)
Terrifier 3 – Five years later, Sienna and Johnathan struggle to put their traumatic experience behind them, but are planning to have a nice Christmas holiday together with their remaining family. Naturally, Art the Clown and his new sidekick have their own holiday plans that may throw a wrench into the proceedings. Hijinks ensue.
By this point in the series, you pretty much know what to expect, and this new entry retains the increased level of creativity and craft established in the second film. Indeed, and maybe this is just because I was watching this one in a nice theater, it actually just looks fantastic. It wasn’t shot on film, but something about the lensing or graininess lends it a distinct vintage feel. The Christmas setting and great production design helps, what with all the colorful lights and decorations. I was genuinely surprised at how great this looked.
As befitting the slow establishment of a new horror franchise, this one also features tons of cameos, including the likes of Tom Savini, Clint Howard, and several other recognizable faces. David Howard Thornton continues to work wonders with his expressive performance (his delight at encountering Santa Claus in a bar and subsequently messing with him is quite well done). Victoria Heyes returns from the first movie as the final girl turned villain and basically becomes Art’s sidekick, to middling effect. One of the great things about Art is that he doesn’t speak, and while we’ve started to establish a bit of “lore” about him, we really don’t know much. Heyes’ sidekick is clearly some sort of demonic presence, and she speaks too. It’s implied that there’s some sort of connection between her and Sienna, though it’s all very hand-wavey.
It comes off a bit as one of those things where the series started off trying to subvert conventions, but is now diving headfirst into the same conventions it was trying to subvert earlier. Is that a good thing? I dunno, it’s all still mostly just an excuse to engage in gory mayhem, which is obviously still on the menu here. It’s more or less on par with Terrifier 2 in terms of the mean-spirited and gruesome kills, including multiple kids (usually considered a cheapshot in horror films, but not unheard of either, especially in stuff like this series). A few kills happen offscreen, which is a bit odd, but I suspect here may be a reason behind that. Clocking in at just over two hours, this one is shorter than Terrifier 2, but still perhaps a hair too long.
Again, this is not a series for everyone, and if you’ve gotten to this point, you pretty much know what you’re in for. The Christmas setting breaths a bit of fresh air into the series, while the establishment of lore is perhaps a bit less successful. There is an actual plot and characters, even if it can be a bit clunky at times (and honestly, by this point, setting the bar so low in the first movie will only get you so far). The ending isn’t exactly a cliffhanger, but we know there’ll be another movie coming. I suspect this series will run out of steam at some point, but I think it’s probably safe to say that we do have another horror icon on our hands, even if Art the Clown won’t quite reach the mainstream heights of his predecessors (but then, box office for this is at $38 million and counting, which is mighty impressive for an unrated splatter flick) **1/2
Well that was… interesting. Even if these movies aren’t exactly my thing, watching them feels a bit like anthropology or something. I can certainly appreciate these movies on some level, though I doubt I’ll be revisiting them often. I am genuinely curious to see where it goes though, and will probably catch them at the theater. One thing I thought about this series is that even though I don’t love them, I like them a lot more than several of the recent attempts to revive longstanding franchises (I was particularly thinking of David Gordon Green’s recent Halloween movies, which were mostly just a slog). Anywho, we’re already in the homestretch of the Six Weeks of Halloween. These Terrifier movies gave me a hankering for some more conventional slasher type movies, so I think we’ll be tackling some neo-slashers next week.