I enjoyed Damien Leone's Terrifier, though certainly wasn't a film without its issues, namely the near absence of any real plot. It did however introduce me to one of the best new horror film villains of the twenty first century, namely, Art the Clown. Since then I have checked out the film he first appeared in, anthology horror All Hallows Eve, which showed the origins, now with Terrifier 2 we have the evolution of his character. Spoilers for the first film are sure to follow.
Terrifier 2 picks up where the last film ended, with the supremely creepy killer mime, Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton - Terrifier) miraculously coming back to life at the Miles County morgue. While visiting a nearby laundrette to wash his blood stained costume, he encounters a creepy young girl (Amelie McLain - Transference), who like him is also dressed as a clown and mute. A year later and a troubled girl, Sienna (Lauren LaVera - Iron Fist TV series) is determined to enjoy Halloween, a night which also happens to be the anniversary of the massacre by an unknown person dressed as a clown. Sienna begins to have nightmares about Art, while her twelve year old brother Jonathan (Elliot Fullam) has hallucinations of Art and his new assistant. With their deceased father having drawn the clown in the weeks leading up to his suicide (that happened before the events of the first movie), they soon come to believe that there is some strange link with Art. A link that the clown also seems to sense, as he has chosen Sienna and her family as his new targets, as he begins a new bloody rampage across Miles County.
As a reaction to the criticism of a lack of plot in the first film, this time around there is much more of one. It seemed to be able to fit in a story around all the very violent killings of Art that the length was increased, leading to a film with a run time of two hours and twenty minutes. For the most part this still flew by, yet I can't say that towards the end it did start to feel ever so slightly like it was beginning to drag. It was interesting the similarities this felt it had with the Halloween franchise. Both take place on Halloween and feature a white faced killer who never speaks. Both killers are able to blend into their environment due to it not being strange that someone would be dressed up as something scary for that particular night. In A Nightmare on Elm Street fashion the clown is able to enter the dreams of his victims, while his young assistant may not be a physical threat, but has the ability to appear as a hallucination, as well as impersonate voices of other characters. I did like the girl, she was very good at doing creepy smiles, same as the clown himself.
The story mostly focuses on Sienna, with a whole bunch of friends and others slaughtered in imaginative fashion. I liked her character and how vulnerable she feels as a person, constantly having panic attacks even before Art makes an appearance. Her brother was more of a blank slate, his character didn't feel that well developed, and being a child I figured he would escape much of the torture and bloodshed.
The story mostly focuses on Sienna, with a whole bunch of friends and others slaughtered in imaginative fashion. I liked her character and how vulnerable she feels as a person, constantly having panic attacks even before Art makes an appearance. Her brother was more of a blank slate, his character didn't feel that well developed, and being a child I figured he would escape much of the torture and bloodshed.
The first film only got a supernatural feel towards the end when Art is resurrected. This time around there is more of a strange feel, the killer constantly survives violence that even Michael Myers may have struggled with. That actually works against the film, with the last part of the film in particular starting to drag due to the amount of times it feels like Art has been defeated only for him to be perfectly fine moments later. It was interesting to get a spin on the usual unkillable killer trope though, that was one part of the last third that really did work.
Thornton is of course excellent as the antagonist, his facial expressions brings so much life to the clown, creating darkly comedic scenes. My favourite Art moment had him in the midst of brutally carving up a teen when her mother enters the room. Art looks up at her and does this hilarious shoulder shrug with a look on his face suggesting 'what am I like?' That his facial expressions give so much emotion to them was always a delight. Scenes such as him answering the door to trick or treaters, and offering them candy from a hollowed out human head, or him doing exaggerated sneaking movements gave this character such personality despite the lack of any dialogue. The gore highlights of the film are the many gruesome deaths, made more so in the way that victims seem to survive through. Characters are scalped, have their faces bashed in, in close-up detail, limbs are severed, people whipped with custom made cat-o-nine tails. All of this is nearly achieved by practical effects alone, the director has stated that around 99% of the effects were done practically, with a few requiring digital effects to complete the look.
It was nice to have more of a story, I would have liked some of the mystique of Art himself to be explored. As much as I did enjoy the movie I did feel it was overlong, especially towards the end in a very well designed funhouse, that part seemed to go on forever. I enjoyed this as much as Terrifier, but I wouldn't say it was a better film, more on an even level, but with the joy of discovering Art for the first time not being present meant that it didn't come across quite as well. As much as Art was superb, I feel the run time could have been cut down without losing much. If you like extremely bloody and gory films, with inventive deaths, and if you like psychotic mute killer clowns then this splatterfest is for you!
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